a bunch of dreadfully common-looking flowers

Waking up in the morning is a cosmic event in itself. Especially on first thoughts. It is like bungee jumping from deep sleep to recovering your senses back, one by one. And lastly, you must recognize where you are sleeping. That is crucial!

I sometimes have sleep-over schemes with friends when I was doing my thesis and they say I always give them them a strange look of surprise when they have me awaken. The why-are-you-here, where-am-I look.

See, I have serious trouble to everything I see and feel upon waking up. Last February I was used to sleeping in my room in a boarding house alone.  When I had to go back home one weekend, and had fallen asleep in the living room,  I shakingly screamed shitless fear (had the whole house awake) when I saw someone switching the light off.

And it was just my father. I freaked him out and scared him to death that he had not gone to sleep until morning.

I had the weirdest and the most tart first thoughts upon waking up.

Today is perhaps the most special because it had me writing. [I still have this kind of writing ek-ek syndrome. Not to mention I submitted the most crappy non-fiction piece I have ever made. To think, it was definitely not a first-thought-when-I woke-up kind of thing.]

I have something you can never have from your future.

I am time machine. Pastpresentfuture in the skies.

It was a quarter to three. The ice in the bowl had already melted. The drinking session was about to round up to its fourth set of beer. Demented Girl came in with a bowl full of crushed ice.

“Ayos kaayo akong pwesto diri ba, atbang sa moon,” Happy Girl said.

We turned to the direction and saw the bright lamppost against the backdrop of dark, gray sky.

“Adik man ka uy!” Happy Boy droolingly said.

To pass the time into some kind of oblivion, the effect of alcohol seeping through us, showing in our conversation that was nonsensical, we swore we would forget what we talked about. What remained was the feeling of drunkenness and the longing for some people who could not be with us that night.

Later in our talk when everything was smoothened as if wiped out,  signs of morning light showed in the farther part of the sky. And that was when we parted. Hangover was too early to be realized.

This post is a response to my brother’s post in his blog in Multiply.

I wrote a personal essay, dating March 30, 2009  in my Creative Nonfiction class with Sir Tim. I did not revise it, adding up to my pending papers. I’m afraid I can’t revise it anymore.

I have second thoughts on posting the whole essay. And so I decide I only post an excerpt.

Here it is:

Accidentally, although Jacques did not believe the unholy chance, I read something in one of the dumped notebooks that he was attracted to someone. In the end of the knot of words, in his boyish handwriting that did not have complete sentences, as if he was withdrawing to confess, I read that the person he was attracted to was a boy.

For some time, I kept his secret as it clearly did not mean to be known.

He was in his first year in highschool, and I was considering the thought that he had just misunderstood the “attraction”. But I was so bothered that it depressed me for two months. I finally handed him a note one night when we were about to sleep, telling him that I knew. After several exchanges of notes, full of his angry words for my sneaking; he agreed to trust on not telling our parents just because he had not have the choice. I understood that it was more of a pleading.

Several times he would talk about the boy in a friendly manner. And I would respond discreetly, trying to mean I discourage him to do so.

My knowing and Jacques’ knowing that I knew were a double-edged, bad combination. I had become investigative with his Saturday outings, reaching to the point of giving him threats of squealing his secret to our parents if he did not stop seeing the boy. We fought more constantly since then. We fought silently. Our late-night chats stopped.

Our parents must have noticed that our contempt for each other had unfathomable grounds. My father angrily confronted me. I was scared and answered him disjointedly that Jacques had been having two girlfriends at a time. But he did not buy my reasoning for his anger grew on me. I went crying to my room while my mother followed me. I regretted that I told her what Jacques had been up to. BECAUSE not for long, my father had to know.

The night my father knew was anguishing. He confronted Jacques in the bedroom. I was seated in the sofa in the living room, trying to ease an upset stomach—an indication of guilt. After a thud in the wall, Jacques went out running from the bedroom door as if to free himself from the torment. He ran away from the house without minding to wear his pair of slippers. Father emerged from the door, angered and red-faced.

I tried to go after Jacques but I did not catch up. He was too fast that he just disappeared.

My mother, teary-eyed, asserted that we look for him. We went to his friends’ houses nearby for we thought he could not go too far penniless and barefoot.

Five hours after, by midnight, Jacques returned. My mother burst to tears.

No one dared, for four years, to lay a word about it. It was as though everyone agreed in silence to forget. Jacques and I did not have late-night talks anymore. But we tried to get along just fine.

He went to U.P in Diliman for college. The distance between us got us to talk more of things in depth. We had quality chances talking in the phone, sharing stories and updating each other of our lives.

Only when the time was right, when we were talking spontaneously of anything under the sun, I asked Jacques casually so as not to burden him with the memory where he went the night he ran away.

“Sa waiting shed sa sabungan. Naglingkod lang ko didto unya gutom pa gyud kaayo.”

I thought of the distance he ran. Almost three kilometers, back and forth. Penniless. Barefoot.

I look at him at times with an overwhelming load of memories. There are times I see the three-year-old child that solved the maze. This is the childish glow I see in him every time he comes home during summer vacations and semestral breaks. His voice is deeper and his shoulders are wider. In our late-night talk, we lay in the same bed, and listen to each other—just listen.

What is important is, he always comes back home.

If I had graduated last April what could have happened is this:

I’ll end up crazy in some nameless street in Singapore.

And because I did not graduate last April and I am very susceptible to criticisms from family and friends, I have come to think that either way around life is crazy for the inevitable and irrevocable quasi circumstances that leave people to regret the one thousand things they could have done over the two thousand they wish undone.

“I was like this therefore I am like this,” would not serve my case. But what can I say?

A friend tells me a month ago that he feels futile. I ask him now and I hear the echo of his futile self.

Out of the blue, I receive a wall post in Facebook that says I should fix my life. Another friend likes the post.

A drunk Philosophy teacher preaches “You can’t end up with x, y, and z. You end up with one. That’s when you end up with x. You end up with me.”

“Suit yourself,” a friend says. The same friend says, “You are addicted to disallowing people to be happy.”

Another friend asks me if I have certain issues I have to tell him about because I am very sarcastic the whole day.

—————-

This could not be the commencement of my 21^st year.

P.S.

Talk to me when I have developed the one-time skill to clean my room because that will mark the end of this phase. When that happens, I can do just about anything.

For instance, a new blog for my new perception.

I’m fine
is the template to how are you,
and what are you doing reminds me of
“Where Are you Going,
Where Have You Been?”

Unless we say what we mean,
you P-O-I-N-T O-U-T that these are just
B-U-T-T-O-N-S
we key-in to precede
a grin,
as in to shift+
colon
then D.

Then
Then
Then -
for -O-N-’T D-O T-H-A-T A-G-A-I-N.

Because you say “I never thought this means anything,”
instead of “I’m not like this in person,”
so I say “Yes, I figured,” for whatever it might mean;
in place of shift+colon then D.







for -O-N-’T B-E.

I said and wrote and thought of so many things I wish to say. As the events of my life have proven, that kind of leisure is not possible. There are just too many words to waste.

As the cliché goes, things are not always what they seem. You, whom I have never really known all the while, do not realize that you have not known me too. You haven’t tried knowing me.

My fascination is wasted not because you did not succumb to it, but because it is something you do not understand—something you mistake we can settle in the privacy of your cheap trick.

I was wrong to believe I needed closure from you. Closure does not exist. You, from my imagination, do not exist.
And just like you, I said things I do not really mean so I can write about it. Hate is not necessary, as I said. I have always had something else in mind, which you call paranoia.

You, as always, are the character I imagined in my head.

I told myself days ago that I must be needing a tragedy so I can write. It was a bad thing to actually think of it, and worse, let other people know that idea ever crossed my mind.

First thing, I learned that my brother got dumped. And now he is threatening his ex-boyfriend that he’ll kill himself.
Second thing, which is not really as tragic-sounding as the other, my alleged OTL whom I haven’t talked personally in three bitter years, wants to meet me in a private room.

Why would I ever fashion something like these into fiction? when all the world, REALLY, does not care about the beauty and tenderness of intricately weaving un-feeling after feeling after un-feeling–no matter how painful they are for someone who has to know.

For all I care, they are dreadful in an ugly way. Fiction chokes to death.

*One True Love

it has not rolled up yet. the curtain is still down. there is a show on no show. but i must write on that so i can drag this abstract to wherever. so dont expect i am going to mean anything. writing has become so confrontative for me that i have been evading anything that has to do with it. i mean, except on talking about everything that i wanted to write. i tell you, i have been trying. but everytime i sit to rummage for words, i lose everything. it frustrates me. the fact that i have inc’s to complete does not help me to write at all.

and so i am just letting myself burst. i have used all the metaphors i can think of. i have become so impatient with words. i have become apathetic to even find sense to write. although this is ironic, i am teasing myself to meet a deadline this month.