Nature's Beauty and Bounty

El Nido

Puerto Princesa, Palawan

November 6-9 (+2), 2013

Breather

Day 58++
Your days slowly sinking into nights, momentarily stared at, barely noticed.
Those days when a piece of you you choose to let go.
And he's there, accepting, never questioning.
And he stares, as if he has understood your silence for so long.
And instead of being sad, you feel at peace.
Because he understands.
Because even with words un-couragingly unsaid, he knows.
Like he always has.
The embraces. The trivial teases. The deep conversations of how one led life without the other. The getting over phase, but choosing to keep a part of what once was. The occasional scrunches on the nose just because he realizes something you deliberately deny. The arms that felt like home. The rides that could go on forever, succumbing to lights only the stars gave, curves only the hands could hold, and spaces only one could ever fill.
---------------------------------------
 I'd bet a million light years to have them all back.
I miss you. (There's no denying that. Certainly not in my turf.)

Bathroom Musings

I purposely put on your scent at the mall last night. 
And there I was, transported in midseconds to the nights of you and me. 
Like how it's always been, you're there and then you're not and, there again. 
Here I am,
Lost,
in this
Carnival of 
You.

The Myth of You and Me

My father once told me that a happy ending is just a place where you choose to stop telling the story. So this is where I choose to stop. More things are still going to happen, of course, some good, some bad. Some things never get any better. When people die they stay dead. None of us knows why we love, or why we stop loving, or why everyone we love we lose. 
-Leah Stewart

Let's unload baggage before the 27th comes up. 

I hope whenever our song plays, I am there, whispering in your ear. 

Freudian dreams

Some nights ago, you came into my dreams. I insistently blocked off blogging about this subconscious what-not for reasons of forgetting.

But I always carried it with me, fragment by fragment, piece by piece, waiting to be dismembered. To be thrown away, in a place farther from the back of my mind where it always chose to stay.

I remember it in a 2-second frame now. In those seconds, you called me by my three-part name. There you were again, your ultimate detriment. A handful of people can call me that but only you know how to say it right. I remember how you said every syllable, every phonetic of it.

I remember the familiar smell of wood. I remember the face of your aunt and how her mere presence in the house mimicked that of your mother's and even more.

I remember our charge nurse, and what a misfit to picture-perfect did it make that she was there. 

I remember you reaching out and how peaceful it felt to be held by you again. And you know what? In my own cowardly self, I felt brave. God. How could you have pulled out the strings again. You were, you were home to me. Nothing and no one felt like such. 

Then everything was an inconsequential blur. I woke up.

Separated by time and space, back to our orbits, somehow a little thankful such parallels have crossed again, maybe for (insert now or ever), that's all we need. 

GG

"What we have is a great love. It's complicated. Intense. All-consuming. No matter what we do and how much we fight, it'll always pull us in."

I stumbled upon this quote countless of times but tonight was different. Tonight, in between my thoughts of how we came to be yet never came around, I realized that Chuck and Blair's will always be the closest to the love that we had. Because even in the most well-crafted of words, it was something no one could ever shake. Standing against what they threw at us, you were my fact. And as I put it, you were are the one fact I would never, ever give up for fiction.

Bull's Eye

"I admit,
I was afraid
to love.
Not just love,
but to love her.
For she was a stunning
mystery. She carried things
deep inside her that no one
has yet to understand,
and I,
I was afraid to fail,
like the others.

She was the ocean
and I was just a boy
who loved the waves
but was completely
terrified to
swim."
-Christopher Poindexter

"She wiped the black spilling
from her eyelashes onto her cheek,
and in that moment, I wanted, I
needed, for magic to exist.
I wanted to peel back her lonely
skin and feel her sadness stare
straight into the blue inside my eyes.
I wanted and I needed it to know,
that I, I loved her too, and my god
I, I would fight for her."
-Christopher Poindexter

#Poindexter. #Lang Leav. #Neruda.
#cerebral #love #lostandfound #idiot #missesandkisses

Issues

Let's get away from all this tension. 

Maypa wa nalai kwarta para wai gubot. Puya Lord. :'(

Senses

Rewind to almost half a decade of sunrises and sunsets, I have always wanted to write you a piece of the senses. It gets me perplexed how you rob me of words when you're around and how you put them quite back together when you aren't.

I. 

Once in a while, I smell you on my skin. And it stops my day. I'm on a chaotic highway, it's an intersection of routes, and I wait to pass. Eventually the horns go mute, and the lights signal for me to walk on. So, I keep moving. Pitfall after pitfall, your silhouette's all too familiar and I keep running and moving with each step against you. And then back. Tell me, how did tiring ever become so beautiful? 

II.

Feeling under the weather, and all I ever have are the memories of how he wasn't around and how you were unknowingly just there. Little did I know that even if it wasn't you, it was you I heard. I heard you say "hang on". I heard you telling me to endure the peaks and the valleys. You were my snowstorm, my saving grace.

You know?

"Hey," I said. "That was just one day."
"I know, I'm just kidding," she said, waving me off with her hand. "But neither of us exactly fit the mold there."
"Right."
She sat back, brushing her hair away from her face.
("My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones.. you might as well hold on to them. You know?")

I hate miss hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss  hate miss you.

Stop it with all the absence already. 

This is neither beautiful nor poetic. Ugh. 

Something a lot of people would spend a lifetime searching for

Our worlds collide
Become one in the starlight
Forget perfect endings
Let's dare and live for the day
Today
Today's like no other

Words come alive
In the story of our time
Let's all quit pretending
Let's dare and live for the day
Today
Today's like no other
-Bamboo, Carousel
--------------------------------

She was apprehensive but only because she put her walls up high.

He was smitten by how firm she stood her ground, it made him push and pull. 

They wanted to go against the mad dictates of this world, but refused to be each other's excuse.
"You are not my scapegoat," she wanted to say to him who believed otherwise.
"You are not and will never be another passing," could probably be the best words that could work their magic for her.

They found madness even in their slightest encounters, but interlaced fingers, detours and kisses along the avenue can only do so much.
They were together, then not again, the inconsistency almost all too uncertain.
They lost it once, twice, and probably this time again. But who cares?

They were swinging through the ocean, making the crashing waves bearable.

They were each other's forces and little things.
For a moment right there, for nights that seemed like infinite, each one had the other.

And theirs was a beautiful thing. 

Or better yet.

Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library care since she was twelve.

Find a girl who reads. You'll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She's the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second-hand book shop? That's the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.

She's the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she's kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author's making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she like the book. Buy her another cup of coffee. 
(Or, her favorite signature hot chocolate fix. )

Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce's Ulysses she just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or if she would like to be Alice.

It's easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for Anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but she's going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.

Lie to her. If she understand syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.

Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again, keep the love, and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.

Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilight series.

If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 AM clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She'll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.

You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a concert. Or very casually next time she's sick. Over Skype.

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn't burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, and let them keep hamster pets, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.

Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you're better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.

Or better yet, date a girl who writes. :)

Disclaimer:  If this may break or reveal anything, let the pieces stay where they should be. 

Why We Went Down the Drain
I always thought we had everything easy. I wasn't a prize you worked sweat and blood for. I was a mere side step, the already-there, the convenient one you already had the moment you realized you needed to have someone. Since then, there never was a chase. 

Maybe because I wanted you to be more of him. I wanted you to quote me poetry, and write me notes like he did. Maybe because I wanted you to show up right at my doorstep whenever something came up. Maybe because I wanted you to see through all my cracks and flaws, all the littlest details -- from how I love for my hands to be held no matter what, to how I prefer hidden personalized post-its than ready made Hallmarks. Maybe because despite all the bold gestures, I still longed for the little things. Of knowing the right noise to my silence. Of knowing my sense of urgency. Of knowing when to come in between my daydreams. Maybe because I wanted you to love me the way he did. Relentless. Incessant. Deep. And after all these years of wanting and wishing to be loved more than you ever could, your strings finally broke.  

I was not surprised. I was not surprised at all. I knew it was coming, or at least my instinct knew we were reaching the end. I only prayed that it come sooner before all the hurt could come in, too. Of course, I was distraught to see something I have nurtured for years fall apart, and then can't do anything. It needed a lot of saving, but I didn't see the point of having to do it myself. All those time, you were my prayer. I prayed that even after all the rules I violated in your men's rule book, you'd make a decision that was for us. But you chose yourself. And I knew it was time to go. 


A couple months forward and slightly a  few moons back, the story pivots. Let me now shift this to you. Yes, you. 

Back in your arms, you asked me how I was. I cannot begin to tell how comforting it was to hear you say those words because for the longest time, no one has asked me that. I was thankful you did. And it took three words. Just three words for me to realize that maybe you never left. Right then and there, I wanted to tell you how much I missed the girl who didn't care what others would say as long as she gave it her all; of how much I missed the girl I was when I was with you; and of how much I missed you, too. I wanted to tell you that when I said it terribly hurt me every time I refused another chance of us, I meant it. 

I'm sorry to have kept you on the sidelines when you could have deserved the best. 

How will I contain encounters, physical and otherwise, with you? Perhaps in bite-sized snippets of sublime after sublime;
in paragraphs, yet they won't be enough
in photographs, however, not too powerful to immortalize
in memories, 95% sober, 5% inebriated, but happy

-- the kind of "happy" I have been perpetually chasing, finally found. 
So this is it for laying down all my cards, in black and white. 

Bit by bit.

It's like watching a snowstorm.
You see the flakes falling but you don't realize they're adding up. Then suddenly, your whole lawn is covered.
All these little things have added up, and you're my snowstorm, baby.

She doesn't.

She doesn't say "i love you" like a normal person. Instead, she'll shake her head, give you a little smile, and say.. "you're an idiot."

If she tells you that, you're a lucky man.

Words and Meanings

"It is not that the meaning cannot be explained. But there are certain meanings that are lost forever the moment they are explained in words." -Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

Finally an author who, in my behalf, spoke her way through all my mutedness.

Depth and length are two very different things.

Hello there

This is how you lose her. 

You lose her when you forget to remember the little things that mean the world to her: the sincerity in a stranger's voice during a trip to the grocery, the delight of finding something lost or forgotten like a sticker from where she was five, the selflessness of a child giving a part of his meal to another, the scent of new books in the store, the surprise short but honest notes she tucks in her journal and others you could only see if you look closely. 

You must remember when she forgets.

You lose her when you don't notice that she notices everything about you: your use of the proper punctuation that tells her continuation rather than finality, your silence when you're about to ask a question but you think anything you're about to say to her would be silly, your mindless humming when it is too quiet, your handwriting when you sign your name in blank sheets of paper, your muted laughter when you are trying to be polite, and more and more of what you are, which you don't even know about yourself, because she pays attention.

She remembers when you forget. 

You lose her for every second you make her feel less and less of the beauty that she is. When you make her feel that she is replaceable, she wants to feel cherished. When you make her feel that you are fleeting, she wants you to stay. When you make her feel inadequate, she wants to know that she is enough and she does not need to change for you nor for anyone else because she is she and she is beautiful, kind and good. 

You must learn her. 

You must know the reason why she is silent. You must trace her weakest spots. You must write to her. You must remind her that you are there. You must know how long it takes for her to give up. You must be there to hold her when she is about to let go.

You must love her because many have tried and failed.

 And she wants to know that she is worthy to be loved, that she is worthy to be kept. 

And, this is how you keep her. 

Dangerous Territory

In the words of Bradshaw, this is a "ridiculous, too-consuming, can't-live-without-you" love affair. And I want that. I want all of it. 

God, you are such dangerous territory.

The amount of hold that you have on me? Much of that I cannot quantify. 

As deep as it gets.

Perhaps if you had been with me through my worst then you will understand all the refusal.

We'd love each other too much our selves would be consumed. When you left, I did not only lose the only man I held on to and believed in, I also lost myself. And I can't, I just cannot, let that happen again. God knows how struggling it was to get me through another day. But if there was anything you taught me, then it was to love myself more than anyone else. And that is exactly what I am doing now. I am standing up for my choices because finally, I have realized my worth.

It puzzles me how we wonderfully start it off every time yet at the last minute lose it altogether.  Can it not continue to be wonderful and void of the past just for a night? Can we not find reasons on why we lost what we lost and five years back, find ourselves with each other again?

We all know where this would lead us. So maybe this is the way it has to be.
Just You. Me. And This.