And October Trickles Down Neatly Into a Puddle of Pages.

By the time I realized it was October, a day had already passed. I hadn't realized how quietly days can disappear when you aren't looking. Initially I planned on blogging the whole month, as a sort of, well, celebration (cerebration? Enk.) but missing the first day was possibly the worst thing that could have happened...nevertheless! I shall prevail...(whut)

Yesterday I got to eat the biggest bowl of gyudon I have ever seen in my entire life (c/o Lawrence--BELATED GREETINGS TO YOU and Mike, who did all the inviting even though he was sick and became more so because of the pepper he put in his giant bowl of noodles). I got to vandalize a wallet in exchange for the giant bowl of gyudon and everybody couldn't have been happier (except maybe Mike, who was sick after all and couldn't eat dessert--not to worry we shall have dessert next time). I don't think I'll ever forget this day. I got to drive long distances and driving always relaxes me.

Below I am retyping what I wrote on my yellow notebook this morning.

Today is October 3. We are meeting Tom Dixon at the Intercontinental. I drew a chair he invented as a plate for last year's furniture class. He's pretty famous and--even more delightfully--still alive.

I don't feel so well though. On the streets I'm not sure if it was my pallor or my shimmering pants that caught stares.

That's all. Below that are my notes from Tom Dixon's talk. (Suffice it to say my unwellness went away instantly as I entered and saw all these awesome looking people sauntering around in the room.) I like Mr. Dixon. He was unassuming and had a great (read: dark) sense of humor, which came out a lot more at the end when he got more comfortable with the crowd. But to be honest, I was a little disappointed, because I didn't really learn anything new. Inspiring, yes, but it's like he shared to us how he does things in his own way and he goes on to tell us that we should do things our own way, which I have already suspected from the beginning was what we were supposed to do anyway. 

There were other big names that went up on stage (I didn't recognize any of them, except one, who apparently teaches at our school, and the only one I liked among them) but all they did was drone on about themselves (except for that one I liked, Mister Alcazaren, he says we should all learn about how things are made) and thank Tom Dixon.

We asked Mister Dixon a question during the forum (How do you start your conceptual process?), but he emitted a sound that sounded suspiciously like a scoff and said he didn't have any particular process, but that each piece had a story of its own. I liked his answer. Deep in my floundering artist soul, I agreed. But our curriculum insists that everything must have a system, an order, a pattern...that we should be able to explain every step. Where does all the fun go, then? Tom Dixon was right when he said that school beats out the fun in you (he implied it anyway, encouraging apprenticeship instead of a design course).

At long last, the forum ended, and we rose from our seats, a little unsure ("that was it?" "yeah, I guess. You going home?" "Nah, I think I'll go shopping for a bit.") Until after losing sight of our blockmates we realized they went in front for a photo op. Of course we wanted one, too. So we went up front and while waiting for Mister Dixon to finish his interview, guess who we spotted....

KENNETH COBONPUE.

So naturally we squealed over his way and demanded (read: asked nicely knowing he wouldn't refuse) a photograph, and he was all smiles and politeness and perfection (I'm probably idolizing him a bit). He actually made that forum worth it. One of my life goals was to meet him one day and finally I have that done with. Lovely.

October looks promising :)

In Summary.

Past the city lights were heady talks of communism--

How each minute of our life so far

Has amounted to this moment

Of shadows and imperceptible hope.

All we have seen come tumbling out of our mouths

And fly out the window,

Joining the gravelly air that smelled of dirt

Under the feet of people we know yet never knew.

But we never change.

Me To My Deadline || My Brain Is A Blizzard.

You are so close

I can almost touch you.

I wish you would stay still, though,

And be a bit more polite.

Maybe then

Maybe then I'd actually like you.

Instead of Plans. | Thoughts From a Year Ago.

I'm not talking to you

Because I don't want you to get used to it.

(I open my umbrella to find

Remnants of yesterday's afternoons

Tracing the spines with a finger)

And think that if I can go back

To take all the wrong things I've said

And collect them all in a basket,

I'll eat them all up

Before you can get there

But then I'll end up not talking to you at all

And I bet then you'd really find me strange.

Take your time

Watch me close the door

Sit by the window and try to find

That girl who wouldn't look twice at you

Except you won't have a reason to.

_________________

Was browsing through my old stuff and found something that still makes sense to me!

Caffeine Vision.

All it took was a cup,

And everything went horribly mad

Everything was a mash of colors

Everything I heard meant something else

But I didn't care, I took everything in

Because that's what caffeine does.

'What does texting look like?'

Right now it's looking like an airstrip

Where words are made of little

Letter shaped planes

Finding their way to you.

Then the room went swirling

Swirling along to Mina

Down into the dark called sleep,

And I dreamt of the coffee in my veins.

Prestidigital.

I watch my message leave the dock,

Imagine the invisible wings

That traverse in an instant

From my screen to yours.

I take the distance of that moment

And put it between my fingers.

But it never gets any smaller

And leaves me emptier than before.

What the world chooses to show us

Gets better and better.

Even as I suspect,

I can never look away.

Manchurian Squid.

A globulous eye looked up at me

Glazed and half-frozen

Pleasant dreams, it seemed to say

Darkly. I swear I saw it move.

Over-Obsessing.

I want to keep writing.

I want to keep writing until I'm out of words

Until my blood runs and my mouth implodes with silence.

I want to keep writing

I want to keep writing until I've translated the seas into pages

Of worlds that swallow people up

And swell with meaning and ebb with the tides.

The moon be contained on a shelf

Heavy words rendered weightless

Pulling you in,

Enchanting.

I want to keep writing.

A section of my wall about the intricacies of your lashes.

Under my bed you'd find tomes about the moment I met you.

I want to keep writing

So I don't have to think.

Mental Graffiti.

Broken things have a way of catching me.

A breath, a beat always escape.

I can never write as smoothly as you.

Words flowing like I can't even explain.

Clutching at my heart until I feel my breath flicker.

You make me want to look at the sky forever,

Where the world is far more than what I see

Where there might be a chance you actually remember me

And where I can forget myself, even though I don't know who that is.

Strangeness is beyond my grasp.

I meld into the shapes of people I hardly understand.

My thoughts stumble into one another

Creating landscapes I have never seen.

But in all of them, there is always you.

On Being Nice.

I’ve always carried around this great fear of offending people. Sometimes, when I’m looking at the mirror or looking at my photographs, I see it staring cautiously back.

Today, driving my sister to work, I carelessly decided to make left turn at the intersection (to clarify things, it’s perfectly legal to do so whatever color the stoplight’s flashing, just be sure the road is open) and ended up pissing off an oncoming taxi. His eyes popped out at me through the window and his mouth started moving rapidly and I didn’t bother to decipher what he was saying, as at the same time my ears were being assaulted by his perpetual horn. All throughout, I was lifting my left hand (an international sign for pardon, at least in my neighborhood), which was making it difficult to turn the wheel, that I didn’t even notice that the stoplight has already turned in my favor and had given me official rights to actually make this turn without offending anybody.

The point is, you can just imagine how my lips were quivering—well, almost. I managed to suck it up and bravely thought about how funny he looked (a flaring nostrilled hippo) and that for all I know that man might have been driving all night and going through all sorts of stress as a taxi driver who, based on a vague calculation I made a few years back, don’t really earn a lot on bad days, which is probably one of these (at which point I was actually glad for a moment that he had a chance to vent out all that horrible domestic or otherwise thwarted-dreams related stress he might have been bottling in, just too bad it was at me).

I told my sister so (not about the hippo part, or the glad about it part, just the he might have been driving all night bit) and she told me how nice I was to people, that I had even thought of that. I didn’t tell her I just didn’t want to offend people.

Wait, is that all nice is? Not offending people? Because that kind of makes me a doormat.

Well, okay, actually I just posed that question to make you think I had only realized that now, but really I’ve been trying to deal with it for years and still I think I haven’t progressed. I hate doormats (the people kind) because they remind me of me. I tend to have an unhealthy response to them, and it’s a part of me that I still have a bit of trouble accepting.

But then I figured that not everybody has this almost-neurotic need to be nice. If only to stop the viral chain that makes people look like enraged birthing mammals, this nice-ness might even be worth mastering. (Note to self- look up: diplomacy)

Fish.

There was nothing I could do.

You slipped away into the waters

While I stared down at it

Lapping at my land-bound feet.

I gripped my face instead

And tried to move around the lines

So they'll look different

And maybe you'd come back.

I waited until you never came

Until I grew wings and flew away

I'd search for you, but

I've forgotten what you looked like.

[Egh, crap writing! I am out of love, so even in a weather like this, it was a pain to churn this out.]

Tonight

Tonight was a night of facing of fears. We were required to attend a mysterious event wherein the university isn't liable for any injury / unpleasantries imposed on our person / belongings. I stalled myself, got there 15 minutes late, and found myself locked out with a bunch of other people who I am guessing were mandated to attend and were quite confused as well as to what exactly it was they were attending, and mildly shocked to find themselves unable to do so.

As we looked up the second floor windows of the building, we could see strange figures motioning in dim yellow lights and shadows in the purple lit corridors. It seemed as if the whole building was the stage. I stood outside for a while, trying to understand what I could see from where I was and failing. It seemed fantastic. We rescheduled our reservations for Sunday.

It has been a while since I've last commuted at night. I realize that nothing beats the cold night air, bright yellow lights, and the general suspicion that people cast towards each other.

What happened was I forgot about the traffic and left home about 6.30 in the evening (the play was supposed to start at 7). All the passing buses were full, so I resignedly got in a near-empty jeep instead. Inside was a pretty lady who was headed for the Fairview mall, and I tried to imagine what her date looked like and why she would date such a person (I was desperate for distractions). Eventually, the jeep filled in, among which were a hesitant couple and a band of women who were sharing a big bag of vinegar chips. I did my best to look uninterested.

I got down at Philcoa and weaved my way through the brightly lit street vendors. I got behind a woman in purple with a large sweat spot on her lower back and puzzled over it. Then I tried to forget about it by observing the faces of incoming pedestrians. I hope I won't have sweat spots like that when I get older.

I was on the UP jeep when Gino called to say that the gates were closed and we had to reschedule, which was a relief, because we had the mini-chairs due tomorrow and I wasn't even close to finishing yet. So I got to the building where the play was being held and met him there. After that, we bumped into Hannah and Don who also didn't make it to the play, and they wouldn't believe that my braces were off even though I was standing in front of them and saying that I didn't have them anymore.

Don: Lies! Lies! *peers at me*
Hannah: *peers at me*

Boo! >:O (Well, okay, so it was dark and everything, and I totally caught you off guard.)

All in all, it made my day. And all I could do as I sat on the bus was sigh happily and smile at the lights that whizzed by and wished that the ride wouldn't end so soon.

Mute. || Dengue Delusions.

There was a spot on my lung.
And it so happened that every wheeze made me
Think of you and I tried hard to stop breathing for a while.

All day long the TV antennae outside tipped from
Side to side, trying to catch every signal,
Line, sound, anything.
Against a sun-bleached sky it was the looks of a
City still trying to find its way in the world.

Where the winds cross, that's where I am.
I'm looking down where you might be walking,
Wishing that somehow, you'd want to be holding my hand
At that moment
Flocks of birds pass my floating thoughts
They don't think twice about what they see.

(You are so vague.
So much so that I write poems about you
Just to see what it would look like.
I want to be able to read something I wrote
And see you instead.
Who are you?)

I pick up where I left off, but
I realize that my old shoes no longer fit.

I want to go to where you are and
Sing you a lullaby.
You'll look at me half-lidded and
I'll still be there after you close your eyes.
But I know that you'll be far away
So far away that the stars can't reach you
And my words will simply be whispers that you
Won't be able to understand
Just by looking at my mouth.

I am at the bottom of a well
And that's where you'll wake up to.

The World Breaks Us Every Moment.

Our lives can be so small,
Scrawled out on wind-blown papers.
Each breath we take
Is a breath like infinite others,
But we forget them just as soon as they go.
What have we done,
Muting ourselves like this.
Spending years like they were seconds.
We should know better.

The dreams we had
Can be crushed underfoot,
And nobody would mind.
We didn't realize that
What we thought were the big things
Were actually the small things,
And we thought we've lost everything.

A Slip of Complaint.

Today I had my plates for breakfast,
With leftover black chicken on the side.
Mechanical drafting is trying very hard
To turn my arm into a robot.
Lectures are trying very hard, too,
To turn it into mush.
It feels like robotic mush.
Either I'll paint my nails pink to cheer it up
Or black to help it express itself.

In class my seatmate put on perfume.
I didn't have the heart to tell her I'm allergic.
My breathing tubes are screaming.
They can't see the point of putting perfume on
Twice in the same hour.
(And neither can I.)

On my way home I realized
That I like the smell of smog.
Well, better than what my seatmate had, anyway.

Notes From Yesterday's Green Yellow-Pad.

Yesterday, I saw a lady jeepney driver.
She braided her long hair back, wore a denim jumpsuit, smoked, and drove like a devil.
I saw her orange jeepney from the bus.
One moment she was right outside my window
and a few seconds later she was gone.
(Like, wow.) I've been waiting for this day to come.

I was on my way to school for an unusual meeting thinking I was late,
but I turned out to be the first one there.
I spent a while rereading memorable parts of my inbox when a groupmate tottered up.

Our task was to eat balot and write a poem about it.
Here's mine:

In our hands lay a river stone
Where inside red rivers coursed through like in maps of old.
We are gods
Moving the world with our tongues
Breaking, destroying, engulfing,
Marveling in the iron taste.
Wanting more.

It was edited to go with all the other people's stanzas, and that group output was awesomer.
We presented it today and everybody was impressed (or so I like to think.)
On the way home, I kept chuckling and smiling to myself on the jeep, bus, and tricycle.
Everybody must think that I'm either in love or retarded.

Thanks to Gino for keeping three-fourths of me un-drenched today and sacrificing one-fourths of yourself. You are a darling. I promise to bring my umbrella from now on and repay you one unsuspecting rainy day.


So here I am in an internet store, because the laptop at home has been kept away from me. I'm trying to concentrate on the mysteries of how floating counters came to be, but I'm just itching to be somewhere else.

Where Do We Go?

We walk hand in hand
In a field of time.
Our cat feet crunch
The ice and frozen grass.
We break off a point
And reel at the numbness.

Onwards, onwards.
It's no place to rest.
The wind howls and urges
Pushing with the weight of the sky.
Nothing to be done,
Yet so much to do.

Who knows where we're heading?
All around is more of the same.
Countless trails,
All meandering and lost.
They mean nothing to us.
We find our own path.

Warm Bodies.

I like your mute gray jeans.
On the bus, a woman regarded me with dark eyes
As she peeled the skin off an orange and
Thoughtlessly dropped it on the metal floor.
I felt something rough and heavy hit my shoulder
And I looked to see a glimpse of blue,
Its carrier struggling to conquer inertia
As we all do.
The bus stopped for a man. Stopped until he reached his seat.
I imagined that this man's life
Would be the kind that the world stops for.
Unlikely, to be honest with you,
But we should stop clinging to the lie
That everything is as it seems.
Sometimes I find myself spending time
Imagining opposites.

The summer days are about to end,
And in my head my thoughts are waking.

____________________________________________
Wrote this today at the registrar's, where I sat beside a man who was applying for his masters. He urged me to take my masters while I'm still young. Endless thanks to Philip for helping me out yesterday. I hope your suede shoes are okay. Today I am finally super officially a student of the College of Home Economics! Boo CRS for resetting my pre-enlistment! Lord help me get my subjects back D:

Someone Must Have Cut the Seconds in Half.

My mum and I went to a piano store the other day. It was owned by a lithe, young man who had music at his fingertips. (He looked a bit like a gangster hero, really, but if you put a bowtie on him, you won't be able to tell.)

Ah, music must be a wonderful thing to own.

After lunch, I turned on a little Satie and nestled in the corner of a cold room. I imagined it was a rainy day and the next thing I knew, it was almost 5. Our days are so fragile. We can kill them instantly.

What if I decided to live my life for myself and imagined that it was how it's supposed to be? Then I might wake up one day and realize that I'm already confined to a wheelchair or something and I can't do a thing about it. I guess in that way, our lives our fragile, too. We shouldn't delude ourselves.

Ghosts

People are apparitions.

What you see through the flickering windows in the subway are like frames from a million different spectacles put together into one silent moving picture.

Let me ask you, if we lose our memories, are we still ourselves?
We are made up of memories, remember?
But we lose so much of them and re-invent ourselves all the time that if all the past MEs and the past YOUs asked for their own place, they'd fill up a small city.
We are not who we were yesterday.

Can you imagine that tomorrow, you will disappear?