ang balak ni blalakera

balak: lima ka tuig

2012-02-01T07:39:00.001-08:00

I. Sa Dihang 20 Pa Ko

Niadtong gihiwa mo ang baki, buot kong mopiyong.
Apan nahibung na lang tang duha, nagduha-duha
og nganong nagpitik pa gihapon ang iyang kasingkasing.
Wala ta nagtingog, ug mikupot ka sa akong kamot.

Kahinumdom pa baka adto? Kadtong mga gutlo?
Basin ang baki ra ang nakasabot sa mga pulong
sa kamatayon ug sa mga pangutana kon nganong
ang kasakit ingnon pod ini pagtawag: kahinay.

II. Sa Dihang 25 Na Ko

Bisan langkaton nimo ang kasingkasing
sa bao gikan sa iyang lawas, magpadayon pa kini
og pitik—usa ka gutlo, duha o tulo pa gani—
apan ang kalibotan kahibalo nga kini dili na buhi.

Kahinumdom pa ka kadtong gibiyaan ko nimo?
Gihabwa mo ang kinauyokan sa akong dughan.
Adtong higayona, nagpadayon pa gihapon kini
og pitik bisan hagbay ra kining namatay.

anti-gloria

2012-01-29T23:56:00.000-08:00

The chapbook is finally done.

You can download it here.

And special thanks to Mark Angeles for the opportunity.

rest

2012-01-29T23:37:00.000-08:00

Cathedral

2012-01-24T05:41:00.000-08:00

Bantayan

2012-01-24T05:35:00.000-08:00

to touch

2012-01-24T05:27:00.000-08:00

This was last year. I didn’t have enough space to share my visit at Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House.

Anyway, I still want to come back here. Sometimes when I am here, I start to believe that old things are meant to be shared, not with the eyes, but with the hands. As if it is only the hands that can understand the beauty of the past. As if it is only the hands that can understand those things that cannot be seen by time. When you touch an old chair or an old sculpture of a saint, you feel a language which your hands can only understand.

Sometimes, when someone can’t talk of the past, you just need to understand his hands, its closing, its openness, its clutch, its willingness to touch.

Reflection/Pictures

Reflect

Doll with the child

Mother with the child

Sunday Walk at Banawa

2012-01-22T04:21:00.000-08:00

There is really something about the trees, the clouds and the sun. If they have bodies, I will embrace them tightly, I will thank them for healing me.

silhouette

2012-01-22T04:12:00.000-08:00

“An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: For loving a true love.

Feet: To chase after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,

for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blind

when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.

But when he finds his love, whatever was lost

in the looking comes back completely changed.”

― Rumi, Night and Sleep

The End

someday

2012-01-21T07:48:00.000-08:00

word for the day

2012-01-21T06:57:00.000-08:00

I watched my feet. It told me about its struggles of being with me.

Together with this body part, I rebuilt a lie, kept myself with a language
that I only knew like my footprints were meant to run, like those prints
were meant to run away from me, like those prints made me realize the truth.

P.S. Will join a unity run tomorrow, a little bonding time with my feet :)

appreciation

2012-01-16T07:35:00.000-08:00

Learning today: just be grateful. Plus, it is beautiful to feel sad.

I cannot have everything. But I am very grateful I can't have it all.

Pictures are somewhere in Talamban Campus.

eyes and feet

2012-01-15T07:27:00.000-08:00

father

2012-01-15T07:21:00.000-08:00

upside down

2012-01-15T05:22:00.001-08:00

black

2012-01-15T05:06:00.000-08:00

windows, nature and etc (part III)

2012-01-15T04:59:00.000-08:00

brown kid

2012-01-14T22:43:00.000-08:00

P (for my best friend)

2012-01-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

windows, nature and etc (part II)

2012-01-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

waves

2012-01-13T17:56:00.000-08:00

Inusura

2012-01-08T04:18:00.000-08:00

(kang ex-president)

Gipangita sa mga kamot ni hustisya ang imong liog, nakaila kaayo sila anang imong tangkugo, ang iyang gidak-on, kinaiya, ug bisan pa kini kwentasan og bisan unsa nga props, nakaila kaayo sila. Pipila na pod kahigayon nga galiyok-liyok sila dihang dapita . Matag adlaw, adunay kahugot nga ilang gipabati kanimo. Sa dihang ikaw mohangad sa buwan, ang gilay-on niini sa yuta usa ka daman matag gabii, apan mas maayo kung tulo o upat ka daman matag gabii. Mora ba og naay motuok kanimo. Apan bisan karon, ang kwarta lang gihapon ang distansya sa kamatuoran ug kahilom, alang nimo ang palad kay kalikopan, usa ka sudlanan sa kuwarta. Basin makita dinha sa mga kudlit sa imong palad ang imong kaugmaon, noh? O di gani sa mga singsing sa imong mga tudlo. Apan basin dili na, kay sa imong pagkasalbahis, bisan ang uban nga mga bahin sa imong lawas, nilayas. Niuna ang imong kasingkasing. Wala ta kahibalo, dugay na diay nga gituok sa imong kaugalingon ang imong gainusarang liog.

P.S. This poem will be part of the Bintayin si Gloria chapbook.

windows, nature and etc

2012-01-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

Years

2012-01-07T06:28:00.000-08:00

salute & gratitude

Dear G,

Thank you for the time. I really thought we would not see each other. But after three years, we saw each other again.

a poem for you:

2009

It was one week. And I met you without ever noticing your skills on art. I met you without ever noticing your hands. I met you without ever noticing what was inside your knapsack. I met you without ever noticing that every day you would wear glasses. I met you without ever noticing how you went home without a clue.

All I knew was I met a man during a writing workshop. He was silent. But I didn’t know we would become really good friends, probably because I was silent too. But when I had a chance to talk to him, he shared something about his cousin. And the only thing I replied: I will write a poem for that man you considered so important. He smiled, knowing I would keep that promise. And I smiled, knowing he believed me that I would keep that promise.

I would write a poem for his cousin. I whispered to myself.

I wanted you to know, I grew up with those words. And I kept it very well. The moment I returned back to Cebu, I wrote a poem, and it truly matched the color of my eyes. It was earthy. I felt how to live after I wrote it. The paper told me how my hands learned to weave words that I never knew before. The more I tried to ask the paper how, the more my heart fit in my body. When I started not to ask how, you appeared to me. And I gave your cousin’s poem. But it was only me giving a poem to myself. It was hard to imagine someone in a different place. I didn’t know how to be closer. I wished I had a chance to learn from you how to be closer with words.

Dear Paper,

I would not write rhythm and meter on your body. I told him I missed my name and it was so effortless when he said "I will draw your name."

It was like his words walked hand in hand from end to end and shore to shore. I was a little girl the first time I saw his promise, the first time I saw this.

2010

I told you I missed my name. Instead of giving me words to convince me I should not feel it. You gave me an email, and inside was an artwork. I saw a huge letter C. And below, it said: C is for Cindy! On the topmost part of the letter, there was a little girl sitting. She was fishing, but not catching fishes, she was fishing for stars. This artwork was my weight. And I learned how catch stars out from it. And every single letter smiled to me as if to say: even if you cannot catch stars, we will stay here not just for hours, but forever. Your artwork made me appreciate my name, it made me believe in faith.

2011

You gave me a CD. It had songs. It was something about a man enjoying on a beach, a woman asking ways to love and a boy recalling his life. Every time I listened to it, it seemed as if you handed me the CD over and over again even if it was not really you who gave it to me personally.

You gave one CD. But I felt you gave me a hundred.

2012

Angela’s Ashes, a memoir by Frank McCourt and Paulo Coelho’s essays, these were the books I could recall on our second meeting. I remembered Book Sale and you told me that McCourt's memoir was turned into a movie. And I didn't tell you I bought it because of the beauty and the power of poverty. But there was more. You knew that it was too difficult for us to meet. I knew you felt it. And I felt it too. But we tried, we both tried and finally we met. Before we said bye, you told me to write something on the book. I didn’t really know what to write. There were only two real things I wrote: the date and the last part. It said: write always.

Three years of knowing each other had turned into minutes.

It was twenty minutes. And I noticed your artworks, it was like the t-shirt you wore. I noticed those hands; it touched that book I gave you. I noticed what was inside your knapsack, I saw a camera: my savior aside from God. It captured your small stay on the place I always considered big. I noticed your glasses. I didn’t know it looked good on you. And this time, you said bye but with my favorite words: thank you.

blessing

2012-01-03T01:37:00.000-08:00

Surprisingly, my poem was published on the very first day of the year. Thank you Freeman. I wrote this poem for the victims of Sendong. Here is the link to read the poem at PhilStar.

Unsaon Paghatag og Ngalan sa Bagyo
(sa mga biktima sa bagyong Sendong)

Himoa nga mga letra ang mga luha nga naanod uban sa baha,
ug kung mokuyog ang kahilom sa katapusang hagsa sa uwan,
himoa ning katapusang silaba sa iyang pangalan. Litoka
ang iyang ngalan, balik-balika hangtod madunggan nimo
ang mga siyagit nga nipilit sa lapok, ug hangtod mokuyanap
ang nanamin nga kangitngit ug hangtod motapad nimo ang kasakit.

Kat-ona og sampit ang iyang ngalan
sa dihang si Ruel walay tingog nga mapaambit
sa pagkahibalo nga naanod apil sa baha ang iyang asawa
ug ang umaabot nilang manulunda sa yuta.
Kat-ona og sampit ang iyang ngalan sa bukton ni Pilar
nga nagpaabot sa katumanan sa usa ka milagro,
unta madunggan pa niya ang uha sa iyang bata.
Kat-ona og sampit ang iyang ngalan sa takna
diin giurom gihapon ang mga mata ni Omar,
adunay kangiob nga nisangit sa matag hapus
sa balod kay sa ilang pamilya, siya lang ang nabuhi,
nag-inusara.

Kat-ona og sampit ang iyang ngalan
sa dihang ang kabaho sa nitun-as nga
mga lawas didto sa Iligan ug Cagayan de Oro
nahimong mga lain-laing buwak.
Didto adunay mga hardin nga nitubo
bisan asa, sa kadalanan, sa atop sa balay,
sa punoan, sa sapa, sa dagat.

Sa sunod nimong sampiton ang ngalan
ni Sendong, adunay alimyon sa mga buwak
nga nabuhi sa matag suok sa ilang mga kasingkasing.

5,045 miles

2011-12-29T23:20:00.000-08:00

My eldest sister wore a dress. And look at me, I was small and I did have a curly hair. We had same hair style.

For almost 18 years, I spent my night with my sister. We shared same bed. But as we grew, we both decided to have a different space. She had her bed on top. I had my space below. Yes, we had a double deck bed. The distance between us was closeness to me. It was not really about vastness. It was just because we had different way of looking at things.

But as years pass by, she now sleeps somewhere 5,045 miles away from that someone who shared same bed with her 18 years ago.

Bindoy, Negros Oriental (1991)

black & white (home)

2011-12-29T22:03:00.000-08:00

polaroids (how will I be remembered?)

2011-12-29T20:30:00.000-08:00

I am 24. But my heart is a heart of a child. It beats with fear and curiosity. And its beating is as fast as a Polaroid. Yet the product picture is as light as a feather.

According to Egyptian mythology, the gods weighed the heart from a dead person on a scale against the feather of truth. If the heart outweighed the feather, a person’s soul would not live on in the afterlife.

And I always believe in afterlife, maybe I will come back as a child again. I don't know. But before I remind myself again of death, these are pictures that will remind me of lighter things.

Pictures with caption and without caption

People will remember me

going to Banawa just to take pictures

reminding herself that she knows her childhood map (Dumaguete and Bindoy)

visiting Family Park whenever she feels stress

owning trees and having favorite trees everywhere

knowing her in the eyes of her real friends (Migs and Pra-Pra)

trying to visit one of her favorite trees at Liloan

bringing a camera without no reason at all and take pictures (not necessarily people)

loving the south especially San Fernando and its church

admiring TC and its diversity (including the people)

capturing her feet than her face

a map

2011-12-19T02:13:00.000-08:00

How to get to my 2011? A map. I’ve collected my best memories in these places.

Bacolod

The confession started:

I am in this place even if I am in Cebu. If my heart had feet and hands, I would learn how to swim the distance between the City of Smiles and the Queen City of the South. Murakami said: “If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.” In my case, it is a place, not a person.

Baguio

This place teaches me another way of saying my heart will never tire with coldness. I wonder what the last day on earth looks like. Maybe it will be ice and not fire.

Beverly View

I have not really talked to P fully about her days, happiness and struggles lately. After watching the city, I feel every word should be about spontaneity. I somehow realize that I talk to my best friend as if I am planning what to say next. It is not me. This is not how it should be. She probably notices I put detachment. But no, I am seeking for my old self. One day, I will talk to her just like the old days. And I miss the old me, the old me being with her.

Boljoon

This is for that silent, serious and naïve girl who takes pictures of her feet near the sea. But she likes the way she is. She cannot force herself to change. She smiles.

God knows that I know exactly how she feels.

Carcar

When this man gave me pain, I decided to live with it. I carried it with me in this place. I made those aches into a locket. I wore it as if I didn’t know where it was. I felt it near in my heart. I looked ugly with it. I took it. And I allow forgiveness to open it for me, inside was a picture of woman saying I forgive you but I would never ever forget that I met already the most devious man. And I met a very coward being once in my life.

Casa Gorordo

This old Spanish house is the reason why I love horror movies. I grow up with the ghosts’ stories living in its doors, windows, paintings, furniture and veranda. For three years, I have taught poetry for children at Casa. Once, I saw two children looking at the bottom of the well. They were saying something I could not really hear. They remind me of a movie by Kurosawa. In Japan, there's a belief that if you call a name into the well, you can call a dying person back. Wells live down; it leads to the bottom of the earth. No wonder there is a well in this place. But instead of asking a death person to be alive again, people now ask for a fulfillment of their wishes. I wonder if ghosts are genies too. Perhaps the son of a Chinese tailor aka Aladdin actually saw a ghost. Japan is not so far from China. Never mind.

Casino Español

The main entrance is filled with large mirrors. But it is also filled with reflections reminding me how lucky I am to have a best friend who truly understands me.

Cathedral Museum

Nothing can grow fully out of protecting the past except for museums. It is too late for me to realize it.

Comic Alley

Anime possesses magic. Perhaps it is their eyes. In the anatomy of man, the eyes are the most expressive body part. No wonder they distort it, trying to make it big. And this day was the most expressive day of my life. If this day had eyes, it had everything it needed to say. Thank you P.

Dalaguete

I do not like to become a woman when I am in the mountains. I always try to neglect my female scent; I keep distance to my femininity. But certain moments still capture this little innocent girl that is obviously showing up without an effort. And Mother Nature herself wakes me up to a realization that the she in me is everywhere. During the climb, there are moments that I fear the mountains’ shape. It reminds me of a woman’s body. It is curvaceous. There are parts of her that you have to be very extra careful. She even has her own language that you have to decode, like the playfulness of the wind, the freeness of the falls, the soundness of the cicadas and the quietness of the grass. And yes, her words are clues for you to interpret for your safety. Our leader, Sir Yen, does not exactly know the entire trail. Yet I feel. He slowly gets to know the mountains in order to search for the right route (aside from asking from the people there). And it is just like a woman, a man should learn to know every single detail of her, even the smallest. Make her feel safe. Then she will show you the right direction.

La Libertad

It was 4 p.m. The world outside was too bright for that hour. It was the last time he explained this: we must end it. And I was about to leave his room. It was the last time I would ever visit it. He asked me for the last time if I was alright. And for the last time I no longer forced myself to smile. I went out. And for the last, last time, I found myself opening another room. I was in that living room where I first met this boy. It was a vivid afternoon. The sun was unkind with its light. I saw myself there. She hurriedly locked all the doors of that particular house like she was running out of time. Running and locking and fearing too bright places. Running and locking and fearing too bright places. I heard the sound of keys being pulled out from his pocket. He carefully locked his room. Before we went down stairs, I secretly put on his pocket those keys I used to lock all those doors. I knew he felt its weight.

Labangon

The place I’m still trying to share myself. What is the best language to use to share myself to you?

CAS Library

Reading a book makes me grow old (fast).

Mabolo

Space has something to do with time. I came back here and everything turned small.

Magallanes

This place is one of my childhood playgrounds.

Mt. Pulag

Until I surprised her, I told her I would climb the third highest point in the Philippines. She did not believe me. But she did when I conquered it just this year. Mt. Pulag’s fogs that tricked me to go nowhere, rains that had made my fingers turned into ice cubes and its wind that seemed moaning every time I tried to reach the summit were no matched for me. Ma, you better believe me when I say: you have a child who has a nave that caves impossibility. You have a child who has faith with same size of Pulag or even greater than that mountain.

After an earthquake, people cannot tell who survives. Like sadness, you cannot tell who can accept it and let go of it.

Ma, I did not reach the peak of the mountain. But I was the second person who reached the camp among our group. I reached it despite of the rain and cold. Despite of my asthmatic lungs, despite of my doubts, I continued. My sadness pushed me to try. Your eyes pushed me to try. When I was there, I had that period of wandering. I looked deeply on the things around me. The next day, I saw clouds turning into sea. I trembled again. There was a large cloud waves, a tsunami occurred inside my body. It was like it fractured my bones as I took a step to bury my last drop of sadness.

Pino

It was not the food. It was not the night. It was not those Santa Claus balloons. It was the people. POWER!

Plantation Bay

I tell myself: probably I am a failure. I like to make a world where the weight of happiness is based from how many aches and struggles you conquer. You wake up happy when you have more problems.

San Remigio

I wake up early in the morning (to take pictures). I realize that every room in this resort is missing something. But the sound of the sea nearby tells me everything.

SM Cebu

I don’t really consider this place important except its art gallery. But when Mafe came to visit Cebu, I asked her about the person living inside her heart. She replied: Umm…mahal ko si, mahal ko ang sarili ko! She explained to me why finding that person was very impossible. Yet, she still believed about the boy she will love. I smiled widely. Maybe five years from now, a friend will ask me same question. I will reply: Umm…mahal ko si, mahal ko ang sarili ko! But I will not explain the boy’s impossibility and will never think about it.

UP Diliman

I want to study here (someday).

USC-TC Museum

I visited this place after four years. Everything was same except for the location. There were children and their parents. Everyone was busy taking pictures. I watched the peacock’s feathers, corals and insects. I stopped staring at those cabinets with different wings of the butterfly when I saw myself alone.

Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House

Today, I saw my reflection. I was in an old mirror. It’s been nine months since the last time I saw my smile. Perhaps my smile was misplaced here.

Happy New Year,
Cinds

PLACES I CONSIDERED PART OF MY BODY
FRIENDSHIP AND FAILURES

(airport, my room, Ginatilan, a tea house, STC, Mandaue/Lapu-Lapu, a hammock, SM Cebu's Art Gallery, my books on the floor, San Remigio's sea shore, my own little studio at home, USP Mabini, Olanggo Island, Asilo, Tisa House at Carcar , Family Park, Mt. Babag, Lolo's last place, Bantayan, Sagbayan Peak and a Korean Resto)

airport

my room and my dream of a boat tattoo

Ginatilan

a tea house somewhere in Gorordo

STC and its light

my favorite memory with P

my favorite place at Plantation

Art's Gallery (Self Portrait)

Books

San Remegio

Black and White

My elementary years (USP Mabini)

Olanggo Island

Asilo

Tisa House somewhere in Carcar

Family Park

Mt. Babag

Lolo's place

Bantayan Island

Sagbayan Peak at Bohol

Korean Resto

Timekeeper

2011-12-17T02:36:00.000-08:00

One night I was recalling the hugeness of the moon while I was walking together with my mother. I was surprised. She weaved a story about the moon and the sun. She said: when I was young, there was no clock in the province. I would just gaze at the moon to know when to wake up. I would just look intently at the sun to know when to eat lunch. The movement of the sun and the moon was the timekeeper. Her story outstretched in the night sky. She shared it to me as if she was telling me not to rush things. She shared it to me as if she was teaching me how to wait. I smiled knowing that night was not really about the solar time or the lunar time. It was not about the hugeness of the moon too. It was not about her province. It was about my mother. At that night there were so many stars, but my mother didn’t tell any story about wishing on the stars. I remained silent. I stared at her like how I stared the moon. I didn’t try to track those stars anymore. I began to mark my own stars. There was a borderline between what the heart’s desire and what the mind’s desire. That night I learned to trust myself first before I said my wish. Before the stars revealed its shyness, a wish scattered everywhere. It went to a young girl staring at the moon and to a woman wishing on the stars.

I realize it is that same night where I see myself many years from now. That night, I build my mother’s story as my first and last pocket watch. It is small, portable, an image of truth, just like my mother. In all the smallness of things in my life, she is always there. Yet her presence does not force me to follow her.

When I was young, my mother became my first clock. This was even before I knew how important time was. We didn’t even have enough money to buy expensive clocks. But I felt I didn’t need it. Every morning my mother tried her best to wake me up early for school, my mother’s voice was better than an alarm clock. When I had my first menstruation, I decided to hide it from her for months. Yet, she knew all about it. When I needed time, she was there. She became my clockmaker. She was my timekeeper. She knew I treasured most the minute hand than the hour hand.

This was the first time I learned how to wait. At that time, my mother didn’t have enough time for all of us. My younger sister was still young. And my youngest brother was a small little baby, one month old infant, unknown to construct time. He was still learning to experience time. That instant, I didn’t need to experience it. Yet I needed to learn to wait for it. To learn how to ask for it, to really learn that time is gold.

I was already in high school when I learned that physicists agree that time is one of the most difficult properties of our universe to understand. But at that age, the only thing I knew: time was something between the past and the future. And one thing was for sure: it was my mother who gave birth to the time I knew. I was released in her womb. In my navel was a landmark of her. Without her, I didn’t know the origin.

One night I see a woman telling her daughter the story about the moon and the sun. The woman tells something to her daughter. The mother shares the story to her daughter as if she is telling her not to rush things. The mother shares it to her daughter as if she is teaching her how to wait.

Merry Christmas Ma,

Your second

Pictures at Beverly View

Merry Christmas!

Merry CHRISTmas

The Feet

The Hand

Self Portrait

2011-12-10T05:30:00.000-08:00

Mabolo

2011-12-10T05:04:00.000-08:00

My parents married here. I was baptized here. But this place becomes smaller or it is me getting smaller after 20 years of seeing the world, I come back. Yet I see too many large places. Perhaps space and length have something to do with time. I am not sure.

Polaroid Child

2011-12-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

I met my passion: Children Photography.

My first photo for this project:

someone visited

2011-12-09T04:23:00.000-08:00

redundant

2011-12-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

They say you'll have two kinds of old photo. One will say: always remember me. These are photos that live with the pain. And the other will heal you. These are photos with much sameness and repetition in your everyday life you will forget them because they are too familiar.

Photos are force. They unconsciously give strength. Yet these are also the memories that are not easy to tell. Its stories are based on how a girl touches the sides of the photograph or the amount of time a grandpa seeks for the wholeness of the picture. Perhaps it is also the tear drop that stains the color of the photo. I am always fascinated with faded photographs. But I am more fascinated with a man inserting a picture of his mother or his father on his wallet. But I find a woman more fascinating if she gives her picture to her man. She gives her picture to him. With much faith and feeling, and at the back is a dedication. It says: please do not memorize my face, it will not last long. The realness of our story will be after I place my name in the lower portion of this picture. One day, you will look at this photo again. And I know you can only see two things: a destroyed world and a changed world. And it is up to you how to see it. Love you.

Old Photos (these photos are not easy to tell)

Treasured Photos Here

Storyteller

2011-11-28T04:55:00.000-08:00

I am five years old and this is the first time I have seen the sea. And the first time I have seen a sea snake that forms its body like a semicircle. This place is in Bindoy, it is somewhere in Negros Oriental. I find the sea like a box of salt. Its saltiness is my playmates. The seawater reveal children same with my age every time the water envelopes on my skin. When I try to swim, I find it beautiful when I am submerged because the sea narrates stories to my body, stories that I can only understand without closing my eyes even if it means: to hurt myself. I have to make sure that my eyes are wide open. So wide I can forget to cry. And here underwater I learn that this place is even more painful than the shore. From then on, I keep on believing that all painful places are sacred.

I am eighteen. My family decides to visit the sea on a Sunday afternoon in the south of Cebu. But I insist not to swim. I separate from anything deep. I know that my hands and my feet no longer fit with the sea. I hear myself telling loudly that I do not know how to swim. I just stand there barefoot, motionless on the shoreline, looking at the water and imagining what I have not seen on its wholeness. But at the end, it is useless. Then I start to count the waves. And each wave I write those places that wound me. Yet in those places, I never, ever dare to cry. Before I go, I allow the sea to touch my toes. At that instance, I realize that there is something about the sea that cures. I learn to cry a lot after that day. I do not know it is possible to feel so much water without drowning.

I am twenty. It is early in the morning. And the vessel is about to visit Iloilo. I wake up early not because of the strong rain. It is because of the cruelly sound of the sea. It seems as if it undergoes childbirth or it fractures its bone. She is moaning. I cannot stand it. I open my eyes broadly. But I never see dark, lonely morning. Instead there is a strip of light coming across the upper deck. I finally realize that the ship hammers the sea. And the smokes of this vehicle are the nails. I smile knowing that there are so many things I can only learn with I am with the sea. But nobody notices this.

I am twenty-two. I visit the Marcelo Fernan Bridge together with my best friend. We stay in the centermost part of this link. I know at that time the sea becomes a symbol of farness and distance. I start to ask myself how many people have crossed this bridge. How many man and woman cry when they reach this landmark—geography of farewell, see you soon and welcome back. And the spaces between the clouds are all different here. All is different except for my best friend. And I know that the sea between the two bridges in Mactan is the last place I look for direction if I am nowhere to be found. That afternoon I learn to love my best friend more.

I am twenty-four. It is the first time I fall in love with sands on my feet. And the first time I hold hands with a man on a street. Every time he holds my hands I feel sands on my feet. When this man hurts me, I cannot find myself. I visit a shoreline to look for parts of me. There I find a story. The waves grow louder and louder in my sight when I realize that it is my story. This story always lives in my eyes. Then, I ask the sea a favor if I can offer this story to her. It is something without weight, yet it is something with an end. I have often wished to give her my story. And I want to offer it to her this early because of fear. I am afraid that twenty years from now I cannot see children swimming on clean water. The sea accepts my favor. I give her a story about a naïve girl. So the next time children will meet the sea for the first time. Then, a little girl discovers that the sea is not just water but a storyteller. The sea can share to this little girl my story. And hopefully, she will offer her story too. She will share it to the sea in the right time, in the right time.

closed

2011-11-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

There are pieces of me I can only recognize with an image of my feet. I can recognize coldness with this picture. I fall in love with the parts of myself especially my feet and the coldness it feels. The coldness in my feet is actually the coldness of my heart. Maybe this picture teaches me something like this is how to see coldness rather than to feel it.

This blog is temporarily closed. I will be back (soon).

happiness

2011-11-19T04:14:00.000-08:00

Happiness

it becomes small. it becomes smaller.

This was not the first time I thought about happiness. But in someplace like the world I felt everything was very, very short especially life. Short time to read. Short time to pray. Short time to see beauty. And with all these things, there was still enough room for childlike gesture like being happy with smaller things with lesser time and with shorter life.

because I am grateful

2011-11-18T05:14:00.000-08:00

Despite of life's difficulties, I am still grateful. A strong family, a job that I really find my passion, a chance to always visit Asilo church, visiting a museum which is filled with butterflies and long walks going home (there are times that I just walk going home).

arm

2011-11-17T03:38:00.000-08:00

Linog

2011-11-15T03:44:00.000-08:00

Ang kasakit sama sa linog. Lisod ikatagbo kon asa ni magsugod.
Bisan imong tultulon ang iyang sinugdanan, lisod mangita og
pamaagi kon kanus-a gyod ni moduaw og balik. Ang linog dili
maam-aman og mga luha. Ang kasakit sama sa linog. Karon,
24 na ko, apan ang linog dili gihapon matipigan sa mga gutling
ug gutlo, dili matag-an kon unsa ang takdong oras sa iyang
paglanog ug pag-uyog kanako. Dili ko kahisgot nga moabot kini
alas kuwatro ba kaha sa hapon, Martes, sa dalan P. del Rosario.
Ang kasakit usa ka linog. Dili nimo malantawan kon unsa ba
kadako ang iyang pagtabyog sa yuta, dili nimo maihap dayon
pila ka balay ang mga mangaguba, pila ang mga mangamatay,
ug kon maugkat ba kaha ang mga lawas. Tuod man, dili dayon
maihap pila ka kasingkasing ang mga nibarag. Ug usa nako ato.

Pakapin: This poem will be part of an anthology for Iyas. Hopefully, hopefully soon.

will go back to TC

2011-11-12T16:28:00.000-08:00

growing up: like waves

2011-11-12T15:34:00.001-08:00

Baguio City

2011-11-12T06:34:00.000-08:00

Its lights early in the morning: my favorite part of the city.

I will come back. I will.

An old dog I stared for almost 15 minutes, haha.

It reminded me of a haunted house. I always wanted to live in a haunted house.

I remember this. I fell in love with this picture.

A faded picture, but I like how it fades.

Dew.

The exact place our group (the Cebu group) stayed.
I remember the scent. It smelled like an old wood.
And we cooked dinner inside this room. Hehe!

I spent a short time here (very early in the morning).
I was enjoying my first strawberry taho.

These white flowers reminded me of clouds at Pulag.

The end. I was in Pulag already.

how to write an ampersand?

2011-11-12T04:10:00.000-08:00

When I was young, I had a difficulty of writing an ampersand. I did not know how to write it in an instant. I ended memorizing a g clef. Yet I often used an ampersand because I liked its symbol: to connect.

Ampersand. It attaches things that I hate. It fixes things that I doubt. It unites things that I adore. It is like glue outside the alphabet. And I like how it bonds things knowing that I don’t have all the strength to really bond people, places and even things.

I like the sound of the kitchen when my father is around; it seems that place knows him better than Mama. The sound is like an ampersand. It connects all things there like the spoons, the stove, the sink, everything. I watch his hands with the dishes. I always admire those hard working hands, those hands that I long to have. During dinner, all that remain of him is the outline of my plate. But I realize he is more than that. He bonds this family for 26 years. It doesn’t matter what is in this plate for I am finally at that state where I can perfectly write an ampersand. Thank you Pa.

P.S. Will look for ways to search for a copy of Bourne Ultimatum. You know that my love for war and detective-mystery movies comes from you.

So you’re crazy too?!

2011-11-11T22:12:00.000-08:00

I need some faith.

Sound

2011-11-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

Something is missing. And its name is not with me. I don’t know what to name a misplaced slipper of a husband for almost five years, a disappeared childhood of a 37-year-old woman on a death row, an unused dining table, an empty body suffering tuberculosis, a hairless head of a 6-year-old girl because of cancer, a fractured hand of a 58-year-old carpenter, a wrinkled hand still waiting for someone, a 20-year-old preserved fetus inside a Bio Lab, a new-born baby with a mother positive with HIV, a sardine can that turns into a flower vase for the death of a 5-year-old girl beaten and raped, what do I name all of these things?

Does a gunshot have a name? Does a sound that a man hears and feels at same time when he kills himself have a name?

A friend told me a story about a bus. 1993, Baguio, he was with his family, they were about to go that city for the first time when he almost saw nothing. An accident happened. After that, he said: I don’t remember what the world sounds like. Everything was just too sudden to make a single syllable. Life is a name, a fast name. Life is too fast to create a tiny scrap of echo in the throat, too fast to remember Cain and Abel, too fast to name something, to name something missing, to name nothing, to name the origin.

1987, Cebu, I was born. But what if, at that day there were 40 Japanese workers that were buried in an avalanche in Toyama, Japan. Or there were 22 persons that were killed when a bus plunged down a mountain side near San Salvador. What if all 47 men aboard the two Newfoundland trawlers Blue Wave and Julie were reported drowned when the vessels capsized in heavy seas and severe icing conditions, and what if these things really happened? I wonder how many people were soundless on the day I was born, because the first thing I did was to cry.

there was once a street

2011-11-04T20:00:00.000-07:00

After their separation, the traffic lights turn into historical artifacts; the buildings possess scientific value; the surviving city trees grow into sculptures. And their palms, it becomes the highlight of this spot. This street has become a museum, a place where old things are preserved, yet dead.

There was once a street. There was once a man and a woman on a street.

There was once a hand and another hand holding each other, they were measuring each other’s palms by grasping each other’s fingers. It was a distance from the edge of her right ear to the end of his heart. But it was more of measuring the space and its celestial bodies, like searching and researching constellations. Their palms were the milky way, and those arc lines on the inner surface of their hands were the other stars like a semicircle of lights. There once was a night that they learned the landscape of a palm better than its length. But still, they were measuring. This street was stronger than elsewhere. This street was the shape of water. Each corner followed the people anywhere.

There was once a street. There was once a man and a woman on a street.

This street embalmed their palms into this fall into line, it was a straight-line, until there was second line, and it became their borderline. This turned into a firing line. This was their finish line, this street. They left each other. When they separated this street became empty in its full desire. No hard-core rugby boys, no street children at the glass doors, no fish ball and kwek-kwek vendors, no pirated DVDs, no lights, no whore, no more pollution, no noise, nothing.

There was once a street.

There was once a street like every time I repeat that word: street. I give you the exact dimension of their palms like love is measureable, when it is not. And this, this is the downfall of separation by believing that distance is the length between two things that makes them closer. But no. No, because in the very beginning that man, that woman, they were not measuring their palms, they were measuring the spaces that always separated them, they were measuring spaces that they could not fill in.

A Cave in Dalaguete

2011-11-02T23:29:00.000-07:00

You looked somewhere when you told me I am naive. I did not reply. I began to look somewhere. Then I was tracing myself for the first time inside a cave in Dalaguete.

I saw her, myself.

The darkness grew heavy when she blackened her body with doubts. She did not dare to remove it. Man, she was not pure as what you thought. She was so ignorant of so many things that she failed to know that rocks could talk. They spoke so softly. You could not hear them. The rocks were astir. And inside the cave, they were everywhere, in the sides, at the bottom. They were messengers. They were souvenirs of long-ago. They carried stories from all parts of this archipelago through its size and shape. She listened to their life narratives with a language she could not understand. But their pauses summarized all their tales. At that moment, she was not anymore inexperienced of the world. When she touched the man-made stairway and looked down, she saw nothing except a body of seawater. She was a lover of the deep. But she did not even know how to swim. In fact, when she was ten, she almost lost her life. She drowned, believing that she could swim. That day, she still trusted the water and that it was the most sacred thing. And she prepared herself for her next real death.

She still looked somewhere. I still looked somewhere.

Grave of the Fireflies

2011-11-01T20:52:00.000-07:00

I really like anime. I like their eyes. It says a lot of things.

And I like this film. Yes, more than Spirited Away, more than My Neighbor Totoro, more than Howl's Moving Castle, more than Tales from Earthsea, or The Girl who Leapt Through Time. More than them.

Mud pies and eating stones. Think of the bombs before you drop it.

Watch this film. I cried with them.

Mama

2011-10-31T21:47:00.000-07:00

upper picture: the clouds that looked like the sea
lower picture: a friend who watched the view with the mist of the mountain

It was on the month of November back in 2009 when an earthquake was felt in Cebu City at intensity 3.0. It caused no damage. But I felt a tremble inside me like I had in my blood stream the origin of its magnitude. You see, earthquakes are like sadness. People can’t really predict when it will occur. Somehow, people can’t still estimate its definite time, place and size.

Seismologists even map past earthquakes to help determine expected rates of repetition. When I think of this, it does not make sense. Sadness has no pattern. It is not math. It does not even have a motion, except to move on.

That day after the earthquake, I began climbing mountains. This was how I dealt with sadness. I did not keep it. Instead, I carried it in my shoes and as I climbed, I left them on my footsteps. When I arrived home, I did not wear it anymore.

The higher height I took, the more sadness I left.

I buried my sadness in places which people did not know. I buried it on the surface of the earth. One day, my mother warned me about my habit of hiking alone in the mountains. She said: Sige og adto anang bungtod uy. I did not reply. I began telling her my stories on how my expressionless feet started to have life on an elevation that did not refuse to touch the sky. This time, she did not reply. But her eyes were covering my entire body with mountain-proof vest, she shielded me with those two beautiful eyes that somehow seemed like mine.

After an earthquake, people cannot tell who survives. Like sadness, you cannot tell who can accept it and let go of it.

Somehow, the clouds asked me where I was from. But instead of answering, I remained there, looking, not moving. The view was too beautiful, I could not move. I realized: happiness has no motion, except to move on. And in someplace where I once buried my sadness, I saw a girl together with her mother, together with her faith with same size of this mountain.

the signs of the sunrise

2011-10-31T01:09:00.000-07:00

Keys

2011-10-30T22:33:00.000-07:00

The door in my bedroom does not have a lock. The door knob does not know what a key means. And my hands do not often lock doors even if it holds too many doors to open and close. And there is nothing else I have to tell about this door except that there was once I often asked it: where are we? And to which I answered: in my bedroom.

The first time my heart was literally broken. I went directly to my bedroom. And I found myself somewhere else. I was inside someone else room. And when I opened that someone’s door to get out, it led me again to another room. And same thing happened over and over again until I was so tired, not by the pain, but by getting tired of visiting rooms. Each room, reminded me of the smell of the city, like Manila, sometimes, it was a shoreline somewhere in the most eastern part of the country. An island named Samar welcomed me. Each room, different hum, different echo, each room, I had learned thousand ways to meet strangers. Late that I knew, there were the rooms of the women he had fallen in love with. To have known him again as I visited these rooms of his women, their faces carefully showed while I was recalling his stories about them.

Sometimes, at night when I opened my door, I visited his room. He did not see me. But I was there listening to them. He was talking to someone else on his phone. I did not know their language. And I’m glad I did not understand them. How did I get here?

I remembered this boy. He shared songs to me whenever he was out of stories.

I remembered a song. I printed it. Font style: Verdana, font size: 72, I pinned many copies on all the sides of my walls. I picked the best permanent marker. Then I erased those words that promised love or words that meant forever. I did not stop until everything turned into black. Everything must be stained, I told my door.

My door did not reply. I just continued. I said: we must be familiar with the dark. We are closest to reality when we do not see anything. All must turn into shadowy and dim. All darkness is a form of a new life.

Where are we? I asked my door.

It was 4 p.m. The world outside was too bright for that hour. It was the last time he explained this: we must end it. And I was about to leave his room. It was the last time I would ever visit it. He asked me for the last time if I was alright. And for the last time I no longer forced myself to smile. I went out. And for the last, last time, I found myself opening another room. I was in that living room where I first met this boy. It was a vivid afternoon. The sun was unkind with its light. I saw myself there. She hurriedly locked all the doors of that particular house like she was running out of time. Running and locking and fearing too bright places. Running and locking and fearing too bright places. I heard the sound of keys being pulled out from his pocket. He carefully locked his room. Before we went down stairs, I secretly put on his pocket those keys I used to lock all those doors. I knew he felt its weight.

I had to give those keys to him because I had forgotten all of them including him.

My favorite poem from Sylvia Plath

2011-10-27T23:42:00.000-07:00

Love Letter

Not easy to state the change you made.
If I'm alive now, then I was dead,
Though, like a stone, unbothered by it,
Staying put according to habit.
You didn't just toe me an inch, no--
Nor leave me to set my small bald eye
Skyward again, without hope, of course,
Of apprehending blueness, or stars.
That wasn't it. I slept, say: a snake
Masked among black rocks as a black rock
In the white hiatus of winter--
Like my neighbors, taking no pleasure
In the million perfectly-chiseled
Cheeks alighting each moment to melt
My cheek of basalt. They turned to tears,
Angels weeping over dull natures,
But didn't convince me. Those tears froze.
Each dead head had a visor of ice.

And I slept on like a bent finger.
The first thing I saw was sheer air
And the locked drops rising in a dew
Limpid as spirits. Many stones lay
Dense and expressionless round about.
I didn't know what to make of it.
I shone, mica-scaled, and unfolded
To pour myself out like a fluid
Among bird feet and the stems of plants.
I wasn't fooled. I knew you at once.

Tree and stone glittered, without shadows.
My finger-length grew lucent as glass.
I started to bud like a March twig:
An arm and a leg, an arm, a leg.
From stone to cloud, so I ascended.
Now I resemble a sort of god
Floating through the air in my soul-shift
Pure as a pane of ice. It's a gift.

Yesterday

2011-10-27T20:39:00.000-07:00

Reunion with Daisy
Conversation with Migs about AIDS and the red whistle campaign
Birthday of Miss Beth's first child
Debate (a sort of debate) on men wearing earing

MY FAVORITE PICTURES
(my best friend and my feet)

my favorite things

2011-10-25T23:35:00.000-07:00

the physics student

2011-10-25T23:04:00.000-07:00

Mass is different from weight. I’ve been told that to remember is to carve lightness on my body, a feeling that hides gravity. Like when I meet a familiar face, things float. To remember is to touch things without heavier hands, as if no motion is governing the stars. And no moon is orbiting around the earth. Yet, there are just things that are meant to be heavy, like this mark. Scars are always weighty. It keeps all objects fall down. These scars allow you to hear smashing, dropping and breaking. It pulls you downward. It re-tells a story that always maps the past. It masters slowness. It is frustrated with date. It narrates hurt.

These scars are not just additional mass or energy that disappears in the present. A classical law: matter cannot be destroyed, and this includes: scars.

At a young age, I got my first scratch from an accident when I was in Negros. It is a diagonal line located between my right eye and my right eyebrow. I got wounds from cigarette somewhere on my left leg, I remember, it was somewhere near a pier. My right middle finger traced an old spot after a debate with my eldest sister. And of course, my acne scars, these holes remind me of my impatience. I often wish to have scars on my knees to remember what my childhood was like. I could not count how many times I fell down on earth, yet this land was not generous enough to share herself to me before I die. Or to have a permanent marking on my hands to remind me of a girl who once spent most of her years during low tide, she searched for kinason and kasag together with her dogs. But I did not have anything on my hands, not even on my knees.

I’ve been told that to remember is to carve lightness on my body. These scars are known as the earth's gravitational pull. It was two years ago when I saw a picture of a woman having a boat tattoo on her right hand, she looked happy. Yet those inks pained her. I told myself: I will have a boat tattoo.

I’ve been told that to remember is to carve lightness on my body.

Who was he? He talked to me. He said things as if he knew me. A liar, I did not know him. But I did not understand why I unconsciously showed him those markings, those markings that life drew on my skin. He talked to me again, and then his arms, his face and his other body parts slowly transformed to asymmetrical shape, it crawled to me like the tentacles of an octopus. It taped on my hands, on my knees and on my innermost rib-cage, I felt heavy—so heavy. I tried to run so fast. I ran that I could not hear anything; I did not stop until I was completely out from his sight. I wiped my sweats with my hand. I saw its skin, it had borders and walls.

When I looked at myself, he became one of those markings I had the most difficulty to hide to.

I am in the process of translating this poem to Cebuano. Hopefully, the sincerity of the poem will remain.

Kids at the Museum

2011-10-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I taught these kids!

Ka-cute uy, buyag.

Writing to the max

Teacher C: What are you doing?

Pupil: No response.

After 5 minutes, he went to me and showed me...

This!

So serious, but I like this photo

They were last to finish their poems and drawings.

P.S. Again, thanks RAFI, this is my third year teaching the kids!

except to write

2011-10-23T09:13:00.000-07:00

I wrote this poem because there was no better thing to do (except to write).

Letter I

The last time my ex -boyfriend told me: I love you. He was on the phone. I replied: I love you too. It was his birthday.

The last time my ex -boyfriend told me: I love you. He was on the phone.

I remained still. I counted the letters. There were eight. And there were five vowels and three consonants that led me to see things I’d never imagined could exist. It taught me things like how to blacklist distance, to get blinded with short-list lies, to checklist armors against his charm and to insist he was happy. Secretly, I wanted to shuffle those letters, trying to create new words like playing scrabble which I would never be good at. But I did not. Instead, I started seeing myself dusting those letters. I had a feeling they were filled with dirt and grime. They were overused. They had not been cleaned for years. I wanted to move them to the other side of the alphabet, so I could carefully get those accumulated black layer hiding on its sides. I wanted to move them. Maybe I could put letter I after letter M or N. But these letters were like furniture placed for a long time in a corner, it became so heavy it could not be moved. Several days later, letter I began to move by itself and made a complete circle in the alphabet, I took this event as an accident. But after that, there was no more present. Everything was just same. I remembered it was Monday. But tomorrow was still same Monday, and the day after tomorrow. Nothing was changing. People were not aging. But they didn’t notice that everything was same. Same places. Same names. Same routines. Every day was same as yesterday. And yesterday was same as every day. Until those letters began to age, I smelled its oldness; the letters were caged by spider webs. Several days later, letter I traced to its original place. It began to understand that it was me who repeated those Mondays over and over again. That Monday, I learned never to explain.

I carefully put those letters back to its proper place; I put it on his heart. He was on the phone. It was his birthday.

I replied: I love you too.

old names, new stories

2011-10-23T02:30:00.000-07:00

Busy. I am trying to finish a paper. I am trying to finish this: Literature of the Developing Countries as a Catalyst for the Renewal of Identity.

Anyway, for this week, I went to Parian again. I visited Casa Gorordo. I went there because I liked to know the history of the names of the streets in the city. Old names, new stories. New for me because that was the first time I knew most of the streets, haha. If you have time, try to visit this exhibit.

Anyway, I didn’t tell you, the house facing Casa Gorordo (this is somewhere in Lopez Jaena) was one of the places where I grew up. I heard stories from Casa Gorordo while I was growing. I heard about this beautiful white lady in the sweet-scented veranda, and the odor of a man from a war that you could smell in the dark living room. That old house was my landmark for mystery; some of the names had changed, even the bakery near it and the chapel across it.

There are some things I can't learn in Negros or Daanbantayan, but I learn it in Parian like how to adore the unknown.

WINDOW NO. 6 CASA GORORDO

I am like her. I nascent feminist.

The view on the veranda, where you can find the white lady

me + the window

Sunset

2011-10-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

Last Monday, I was inside a bus when I saw the sunset. So I took my camera right away. I took pictures. Then there was a flashback.

Sunset

I take pictures of the sunset.

I was grade four when my teacher asked the class to enumerate verbally the different parts of the eye, and among all his pupils, surprisingly; I was the only one who answered it correctly. I just knew it when I saw my classmates’ hands uniting, their hands were applauding. I didn’t hear something. I just saw their hands moving like pendulum.

I didn’t take the applause as a credit. In fact, if you ask me now to enumerate again those parts, I will probably mention one part: the optic nerve. This is the part where the optic disk is located. This optic disk forms the blind spot of the eye. And it was that day that I started my fascination of blindness.

That particular day taught me this: the more you stare at something, the more you don’t see it. For example, a lonely balloon floating in the sky, the more you stare at it by searching its direction, the more it stays away from your view. Or the octopus perhaps, the more you look at it intently and keenly, it then directly camouflages, until you can’t see it anymore. I remembered being on a ship going to Iloilo. I stared at the waves carefully, but the more I followed it, the more I didn’t see it. The waves sailed to the vastness of nothingness. I remembered reading a letter from this man, the more I read it, the more my vision stopped. It declined with the language of my sight.

The more you stare at something like your skin or face, the more it changes. The more you see your fears, the more bravery is seen in you. And the more you see life, the more you disregard why.

I was grade four. And I was asthmatic, so I was never been part of sports activities. But I insisted, I joined, and then I got an asthma attack. They rushed me to the clinic. Then the nurse said: if you can’t breathe, just close your eyes and think of something beautiful to calm yourself. I closed my eyes. When I opened it, I was better. I went outside the clinic; it was six in the afternoon. But outside, it was not. I didn’t see the sunset. Everything was very, very bright. There was no such thing as darkness or purpled sky with orange and blue. I imagined it as a misfortune of nature, when I slept; she got tired to get the dark sky and to move the radiance. She probably forgot. So I just stared at the sun; it was hurting in the eye. I stared at it. But the more I stared at it; the more I forgot what the sun looked like or how it gave rays. I was sightless, nightless girl. I forgot what darkness was. I called the night: the worthiest creation that God made. I could not expound the unknown even the sound of the crickets. And I didn’t even meet with my mosquito net. I caged myself inside the darkest room every day to meet the stars again. Sometimes, I covered my eyes using my two hands. I labeled them: sun and set.

I take pictures of the sunset when I realize I take pictures of the charcoaled sky.

projects for the sembreak

2011-10-19T22:23:00.000-07:00

I started with this project one year ago because I had discovered something: loneliness can die if I just continue to meet new strangers. Sounds strange? But nope. The project was called: 100 strangers. But I didn't finish it. I did only 4 out of 100. Can you imagine that? Haha. But I will try to finish it this sembreak. And I am more motivated to continue it now. Honestly, there is something about strangers; they do not judge you, they do not invade you, for a split of second, they just stare at you because they do not know you.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon was right. He wrote:

“. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that? “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.”

Finally, my new friend, her name is Christina, she has this incredible website. It is called: talk with strangers. Visit it. You will know why I adore strangers just like her.

I started this window project just last month after I felt a huge longing to learn more. Learning by not just asking questions, and stick to them until you know the possible answers (but not all). Learning not just by risking an experience, and realize that the best tutor is your stubborn self. Learning not just by reading books, and trust the pages. Learning in a sense to be born, to be awake, and to know that you have one life, and you have a limited time. And hopefully in the process of learning, there is change. And there is change in people. I was fourth year high school when I accidentally encountered a book from this man: Leo Buscaglia. In fact, he was my inspiration of my future dream indicated in my yearbook. I remembered it. I remembered it. I truthfully remembered it. This man mentioned something about learning and changing:

“Change is the end result of all true learning.”

And another thing, I started conceptualizing this project after my first boyfriend broke up with me. I felt pain. But at same time, I felt I graduated in my master’s degree. I said: so this is how it feels to graduate with a higher academic degree? Seriously, I felt that way. But I felt that way with a different view about pain. Pain with hope. Pain with courage. Pain with peace. Aristotle said:

“Learning is not child's play; we cannot learn without pain.”

My heart. My feet: my self-portrait, and until now I still continue it.

P.S. I will have a new project this sembreak; it has something to do with happiness. I will have more of this, probably this November. This time, I need to sign off. Here, a song by my favorite band, Third Eye Blind, a song to celebrate the sembreak:

Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life

I believe in the sand beneath my toes,
The beach gives a feeling,
An earthy feeling,
I believe in the faith that grows,
And the four right chords can make me cry,
When I'm with you I feel like I could die.
And that would be all right,

Oh Monday!

2011-10-17T08:03:00.000-07:00

THINKING, THINKING TOO MUCH

(Absent-minded, always)

SUPERWOMAN! DID ARCHERY AND WALL CLIMBING

(I could not really claim I was Superwoman, haha)

AND THIS SONG, I REMEMBERED

Tilly and the Wall - “I Always Knew”

Now she has grown, grown up,

and you can't take, take it back

A lullaby won't change my mind,

and I won't ever go back to that.

I will stay true, true to this belief

that we've changed for the best
through this.

THE FEET

(my signature, my heart)

MIGUEL

(This cute boy is Miss Sarah's son)

BICYCLE PHOTOGRAPHS

(Pra-pra and Jo enjoying with their bikes)

MIRACLE GIRLS

(One of these little girls has cancer, but at the early age, she learns the gift of pain)

GURL AKA KEN
(One of my favorite friends, she, I mean he, hehe, always shares his secrets to me)

SWEETS
(I am not a sweet tooth, yet I can't help eating these desserts)

ARCHERY
(with my closest friends: Pra-pra, Kyle and Dave)

WINDOW

WINDOW NO. 5 PLANTATION BAY
(What I learn from this window?)

Without a doubt, I am an absent-minded person. But I'm glad I don't forget to say: thank you. Say thank you the moment I wake you. Say thank you the moment I sleep.

And yes, I will not stop taking picture of a window, I feel like I relearn something or learn new things when I take a picture of a window. Learn and learn, same with this man:

“‘The best thing for being sad,’ replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, ‘is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.’” -Terence Hanbury White

I will never forget to say: THANK YOU.

my students are my birthmarks

2011-10-15T03:58:00.000-07:00

(for my English 37 class)

Ang langgam ug ang hulmigas

Gifts: sardines and noodles

Thank you girls!

Game time

Listening to their ates

Last week, my students from my English 37 class (Children’s Literature) went to Mahayahay, specifically a small school for children, this place is a squatter area facing SM Cebu. We had storytelling. We had games and light snacks too for the children. We went to this place because of two major reasons. First: this was their final exam. Second: to serve. But surprisingly, I was amazed by my students. It was like I went somewhere else.

I wrote this poem for them.

Birthmarks

There is a story: in Arabic, birthmark is called wiham, it translates to wishes, according to folklore they are caused by unsatisfied wishes of the mother during pregnancy. And another story: in Iranian folklore, a birthmark appears when the pregnant mother touches a part of her body during a solar eclipse.

I stop.

I feel a strange spots growing on my skin. It stains like color blue with a mixture of black whenever I try my best to simplify the most difficult part of the lesson inside the class. I find these birthmarks beautiful. I can hear its border shaping on my yellowish skin whenever I let my students see animated films, especially Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. Then without a hassle, I appear living in my past life. Everything was facile. I was a mother with eleven daughters, their names I could still remember: Priscila, Carmel, Catherine, Glennyl, Prety, Sweet, Venus, Cherry, Lucille, Joplyn and Shiela. And I made wishes for them. But in their second lives, I was not their mother. Strangely, those birthmarks return to me like a seal, it footmarks on this earth. It becomes a landmark on my skin. It returns to me, but not to them. But they don’t know I can still see my wishes on their skins. I see their birthmarks whenever they say: thank you. I see it whenever I hear their voices speaking to the children and sharing what they learn from our class. Then, I see a solar mass in a telescope, tonight in my dreams, there will be no full moon. I will see a dragon eating the moon. I will be back in my past life. I will wait for the monsoon’s gas. Tonight, I will touch a part of my body just like the story.

90%

2011-10-15T01:46:00.000-07:00

I remember telling my students in my literature class that in a conversation 90% is the body language, yes, non-verbal. And when I don’t talk too much, it does not really mean I don’t communicate. Surprisingly, my memories are composed of: 90% conversations (I mean, the person I talk to is just there beside me), 2% people (I don't really pick the people I talk to), 5% places or objects, and 3% olfactory recollection. Sometimes, I associate a certain smell or scent with people and geography.

And now that I deleted my Facebook (because I am afraid of the advancing technology), and please, it does not mean I am against networking sites. Honestly, I also deleted my Facebook because I want to make new memories. I simply make new ones right now and this time making memories without trying to get rid of them in the future.

Here, I will share one of my favorite spoken poems by Shannon Matesky:

Technology has made us too accessible lately. If you can’t write me, call me, page me, two-way me, chirp me, or text me then you must be standing right next to me.

See to me, this is new-age stalking and its scary on some chain-mail if I don’t send to five friends I won’t find my true love type shit.

And you see I am so sick of hearing from people because we have become addicted to these wireless connections, and I see devices replacing the physical, I mean what happened to “Okay give me the time and place and imma come see you” now its “Okay give me your name and your email and imma do a search for you”.

And I’m confused how we except cell phones, monthly plans, overages, and activation fees and then have the audacity to be mad our speech aint free.

And I mean it’s good to keep it touch but I could do that from a distance, for instance, I will call you when I get home after nine so I won’t waste my daytime minutes. Yeah to a point, I do it too but sometimes you gotta say fuck MySpace cause I need my space and tell Facebook I want my face back!

See we all perpetuate this and whether you realize it or not you welcome the government cause we say fuck the patriot act but we do their job for them cause every time we fill out a profile or an about me box or a questionnaire we inform them we getting too close for comfort and its only getting worse.

Next we’ll be posting obituaries and bulletins downloading corpses and emailing somebody just to get a hearse.

We are giving people reasons to stalk, spy, and be nosy but we don’t care as long as your profile allows pictures and comment posting. We are obsessed with people getting to know us assuming that they will keep it at a distance.

Shit I have to admit it, I don’t know half the five hundred and twenty four people on my friends list.

And this is our problem.

We can’t deal with the face to face so we let technology replace the space that people are supposed to feel. Let’s face it we are internally afraid of what’s real. And we’ve forgotten that physical contact is more important than our number of contacts so we settle for convenience forgetting that physical contact is more important than our number of contacts so we let public access get excess even if it’s at our privacy’s expense.

Sepia

2011-10-14T09:09:00.000-07:00

Mountain, Parian, Picasso, Museum, Painting

Mt. Pulag and Metropolitan Cathedral

The craziest man I want to meet. But he changed the world indeed.

One of my favorite feet pictures (inside a museum) and one of my favorite paintings

Lomography at Oslob and Boljoon

2011-10-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

Thursday means learning. I learn that people make me a better person. I learn more people need real people. I learn to understand "the most naive girl" inside me. And when I am not with myself I learn that life really is blind, not just love. And sometimes you have to read it using braille. Need more time to decode a pattern and to transcript a code.

These things, I learn too late.

Places and people last Thursday
(This window taught me...)
WINDOW NO. 4 OSLOB

to my best friend

2011-10-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

If I should be transformed into time, instead of looking at wristwatch, wall clock, or cell phone to know me, people should look at my best friend. So even if black hole will devour me, at least I have one person in this universe who knows how old I am, who knows how many times I try to become invisible, and who knows how many times I bury my secrets in history. Look at my best friend’s hands to know what o’clock is now or what century you are in. Her palms are what I call: my present. Her hands are the hands of a stunt woman because I learn from her that the best way to measure me is to have courage to set someone free, and eventually to set myself free. Einstein’s theory of relativity states: an object traveling at high speeds ages more slowly than an object that is not traveling as fast. And when I am with my best friend, I feel so young because everything is on pace. There is swiftness, a rapidity that is close to the speed of light. This means if I would travel in outer space at a speed of 300,000 km per second, I could return to Earth thousands of years into Earth’s future. So the next time my best friend tells me she is not strong. I tell her: you don’t know your powers.

COMIC ALLEY, ANIME, AND WHY I DON'T GROW OLD

(Samurai-umbrella, Naruto fella, Cute hats with same color of estrella)

Samurai (sword) umbrella

Anime Portraits

Naruto!

What I learned today

2011-10-06T05:38:00.000-07:00

It was the last day of school. And my students were performing poetry, songs and dance. They told stories about a soldier, a wash-woman and a nightingale. Suddenly they called my name. They asked me to stay in the middle of the classroom. One of my students started singing a song. It said: “Thank you for teaching me how to love. Showing me what the world means. What I've been dreamin' of. And now I know, there is nothing that I could not do. Thanks to You.”

I tried to fit everything what I felt in that instant with a single tear drop.

And I asked myself: Is there a word for that feeling when you believe you are so thankful in the most unexpected place and people; is there a word for that? I wish there is.

I knew at that moment, my tear learned more than my mind did.

While my students started to stand up slowly, one by one, they looked at me as they continued to sing the song. Then, I wrote a letter for them, to each one of them inside my heart even if I had not memorized all their names. I sent letters into their memories. But I prayed hard, asking a mail man to send those letters into their memories. I prayed that the mail man would be familiar with my words. I wished that the mail man would carefully give my letters in the right time. Yes, in the right time. Those letters, the lessons I taught them and the lessons they taught me.

DAMAGED SOIL, LET US PRAY FOR THE FLOOD

-- and now, I don't know that much about blood

Why I Love Being A Literature Teacher
(I took a better picture to say "THANK YOU")

THANK YOU Literature 2 (1:30-3:00) and to all my students!

My first bouquet was given by my students. As I carried it going home, I carried it like a baby, a five month old baby. Five months, five months of being with my students, I was determined to hold it right. Not too firm, not too tight, just right so that the petals remained perfectly. I was glad I was a holding a five month old baby.

second home

2011-10-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Window Number 3 PARIAN

Parian is time. Window is heartbeat. They become one.

The sunny afternoon welcomes me to Parian, the place that I consider as my second home. I purposely visit Parian every time I miss my old self. This place teaches me to appreciate the past and the dust. This place is the symbol of my childhood. My elementary years are covered with its quietness and rich history. Parian gives silence to my sight. It warms my body. I feel I have worn a clock in my heart whenever I introduce myself to its corners and museums.

when windows teach

2011-10-01T02:34:00.000-07:00

to unmake the why and the how, it allows pain to sleep. But it does not heal anything. And now she stops asking questions. She tries not to please everybody; it upturns nothing, except her heart. She handles adversity and stretches sensitivity, and she tries not to bend content. She remains gentle.

When old things and dust teach us...

Window No. 2 Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House

I don't do much talking

2011-09-28T00:42:00.000-07:00

I live in a written world. Perhaps.

But I am feeling better.

Better. Still life. With Newspapers and Nature.

P.S. I am almost done with my isolation period. Giving an end to my Blue Period.

Seashell, Science and Spiderwoman

2011-09-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Ma'am Merlie's words: Padayon sa imong pamalak!

And definitely, I will.

Part One: Seashell

Acceptance is silence. For example: an empty seashell, hold it to your ear, then you hear the sea’s waves, it sighs saltiness. But the truth is: it produces no sound. The sound you hear is the circulation of your own blood. Your blood? Nope, this is not the story of your blood, but my blood.

Remember before, I bled. And yes, I adored how I first accepted the pain you gave me: from a small sheltered corner, bottled like tablet medicine, until it dissolved in my body. Yet it was not dispersed in two minutes. I took many tablets. I was overdosed. It took months for this tablet to completely work.

Somehow, sound is tasteless. When I was healed, I didn’t say a word. There was no yelling, no thundering, and no banging. It was all a massive silence. Innocently, I realized it had a name, it was called: acceptance.

Part Two: Science says

No two people can occupy the same space at once; I feel that science is a stranger. If not, probably it is an unusual room. If not, a painful secret. Or if not, then it is this sentence: the next time I will see you, we will not occupy a same space at once.

I will never ever map to your presence, according to science.

Part Three: Spiderwoman and her web

Ma'am Merlie smiled while I took this.

I love the design of the book.

P.S. Finally, I did my first spoken poetry during WILA's 20th anniversary. It felt good to perform a poem that I no longer keep.

Transition

2011-09-23T10:07:00.001-07:00

WINDOW No. 1 Inside the house

❧

A woman says: the window is a transition. The moment she moves the curtains the way she likes it and opens the window shield, she remembers how to rearrange her sight when she rubs her eyes. She remembers how to examine the softness of her skin that repeatedly bleeds. Her bleeding skin is solitary, having a length of two months, but she thinks: a weight of two months. She is after of the heaviness, and not the distance. And these marks are filled with cycle and phase until it disfigures, transiting into scars. These scars are places. They have names of the streets that she often memorizes like a prayer. They have their own smell that magnets tranquility and touching. Scars are conclusion. They have their own absence and damage that spill like water all over to wash away the debris. It runs. It runs to the very end when the woman begins to put together the curtains and closes the window shield.

She begins to forget somewhere in one of those places.

Polariods and poetry from Diliman

2011-09-17T22:24:00.000-07:00

Polariod: picture to protect my past.

My favorite window: this was my reminder to wake up, literally and metaphorically.

I made a polariod out of it!

Kaleidoscopic picture, I felt like I ate mirrors.

Rebulto and razbliuto at College of Arts and Letters

Poetry: to protect a picture of my past. This was the poem behind layag.

Epitaph

When I die
Give what’s left of me away
To children
And old men that wait to die.
And if you need to cry,
Cry for your brother
Walking the street beside you.
And when you need me,
Put your arms
Around anyone
And give them
What you need to give to me.

I want to leave you something,
Something better
Than words
Or sounds.

Look for me
In the people I’ve known
Or loved,
And if you cannot give me away,
At least let me live on your eyes
And not on your mind.

You can love me most
By letting
Hands touch hands,
By letting
Bodies touch bodies,
And by letting go
Of children
That need to be free.

Love doesn’t die,
People do.
So, when all that’s left of me
Is love,
Give me away.

layag

2011-09-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

Diri sa akong kuwarto, higala ko ang mga kaka. Kon adunay bagyo, ilang ibintana ang uwan pinaagi sa ilang lawalawa. Ang nagtipun-og kong mga libro, labi na ang One Hundred Years of Solitude, sama sa asukar, nahimong gagmayng mga bato, nigahi, dayon nadugmok. Apan kon imong tilawan, tam-is ra gihapon. Ang mga nagkayamukat nga mga suwat, mga resibo, mga bus tickets, ug mga boarding pass sa salog wa’y kalainan sa mga gihay nga lain-lain og kolor, ug kon ako kining puniton, limpyohan, hinayhinay nga mahanaw ang ilang alimyon. Sa wa damha, ang mapa nga gipilit nako sa bungbong, adunay tingog sa usa ka 29-anyos nga lalaki. Ang ako pod nga kalendaryo sa suok, adunay tingog sa usa ka 24-anyos nga babaye. Pukawon ko nila matag gabii. Madunggan nako ang ilang estorya--

Mapa: Ingon sila, di ko angay nimo kay gilay-on lang ang akong ikapakita.

Kalendaryo: Ingon sila, mas di ko angay nimo kay usa ra ka tuig ang akong kinabuhi. Kon ikaw mangutana ngano. Ang akong tubag, mao man gyod kini. Apan inig kamatay nako, ihatag sa mga bata ug tigulang kon unsa pa’y akong mahibilin. Kung mingawon ka nako, pangita-a ko sa mga bata nga nagyamyam sa ilang adlawng natawhan, sa mga dalaga nga nagbantay sa ilang sunod nga regla, sa mga masakiton nga nag-ampo sa akong sinugdanan, sa managtiayon nga nagtrabaho alang sa adlaw nga pagtapos sa ilang mga anak, sa mabdos nga kanunay nag-ihap sa siyam ka buwan, sa asawa sa mangingisda nga nagpaabot sa iyang bana. Pangita-a ko, higugmaa ko sa ilang mga mata. Dili mamatay ang gugma, apan ako, matag tuig, matag tuig, matag tuig, walay kahumanan. Inig kamatay nako, ayaw gyod og hilak. Mas angay kang mohilak sa mga tawo nga naghilak samtang naglantaw sa imong mga kalikopan, kadagatan, ug ang mga gilay-on niini.

For M

2011-09-04T02:14:00.000-07:00

for you M, for the last time, for the last time because it is a curse to play with the heart of a woman, and most especially, a poet.

Untitled

I loved a man. He was my tree.

Ancient Greek philosophy states:
nothing comes from nothing.
I said to you: you come from the truth.
But you didn’t say the truth.
The truth was a woman.
You were nowhere
or somewhere that I didn’t like to know.
You woke up in another woman’s arms.
You woke up in the arms of truth-ful-ness.

I felt a battle between anger and fear
in my entire soul before I even felt
pain like how I closed my hands
so tightly that I could bruise myself.
Then, I burned those arms that once touched
my body like how I burned your letter
like how I cut a tree, like how I burned you,
like how I cut you like how you woke up
enfolding her arms to yours, but I didn't do that.

Instead I secretly said: you are nothing dear
because somebody somewhere is a karma,
and you will see me in every woman you see,
their eyes are soldiers, and their eyes are me,
your secrets and they are even the girls before me.
And the more you stare at their eyes,
the more this poem remembers you, hits you,
hard, that not even words or hands can't erase.
It scars like the bombing of Guernica, it follows you
until all these words outrun you so fast,
and you see a shadow of man near a tree,
somewhere, you see guns of hatred
with countless crowds crowing.
You see the horizon screaming, choking,
pale as my yellowish virgin skin.
And you are placed in between two questions:
how a man loves and why he loves.

And you ask: "What is this about?"
I will say: a woman or her other name: truth.

*paintings by B Carvajal Kiamko

airplane window

2011-09-04T01:56:00.000-07:00

An airplane window is not a shield,

it does not guard anything;

it is a view showing how clouds become a hero.

It is a place somewhere between eyes and hands.

But it can only be immortalized with pain.

An eye closed and fists are airplane windows.

You can't shield pain by shutting your eyes.

You can't shield pain by knocking it out.

Meeting Oblation

2011-09-04T01:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, I went to U.P. in Diliman. According to a friend from this school, the real oblation is not located at the main entrance. It is somewhere inside the main library building.

Meeting "Mr. Oblation"

And another thing: there is a tradition at U.P. that you should not get a picture with him aka oblation or else, you will not graduate. But I am not a student of this university, I just want to meet him.

P.S. My camera died. Fortunately, it resurrected.

Dagat

2011-08-30T02:21:00.001-07:00

kang M

Ang akong tibuok lawas sama sa dagat, daghang mga balod nga gianod ka papalayo. Maong gihatag nako kini og tagsa-tagsa kanimo. Una, ang akong abaga, dalunggan, bisan ang kurbada sa akong hawak. Apil na pod ang akong bagtak ug bat-ang. Labihan na ang akong kamot, tudlo, kumagko, ug ang akong kumingking nga mibandlas og kaparat tungod kay singtanon man ko. Apan imong gidawat. Gipaambit ko ang akong mga nagbaha nga mga pahiyom ug kahadlok. Bisan ang akong mga gitipigang kahilom, gihatag ko. Apan ikaw wala gyod nagkinto. Wala na pod ka nangayo. Ug imong gihatag ang imong bukton, agtang, pilok, aping, ngabill, ug ang akong paborito: ang imong buko-buko. Tuod, gihatag pod nimo ang imong tabon-tabon, ang imong palad ug pulso. Bisan ang imong mga sekreto ug damgo gipaambit mo kanako samtang ang akong kamot gikuptan mo sama sa usa ka mananagat nga nagkupot pag-ayo sa iyang bugsay padulong sa baybayon tunga-tunga sa bagyo. Apan mao pod nang kamota ang nagtudlo nako kung unsaon pagkupot sa kamot, unsaon paghapuhap sa tigulang, pagkugos sa bata, pagtulod sa kamatuoran, pagbira sa kalipay, pagsuwat sa kasakit, paglapay sa kasubo, ug pag-ampo. Dinhing taknaa gitigom nato ang atong mga gipang-ambit sa isig usa. Gitagaan og lahing nga mga ngalan. Giihap ang mga higayon diin ikaw nakaginhawa uban sa akong kadagatan tungod sa imong mga halok. Apan sa kadugayan wala ka kakita sa kaanyag sa akong mga balod, usahay di nimo masabtan ang akong pagtando sa buwan, nakit-an nako ang imong kalisang. Gianod kita padulong sa baybayon, didto sa mga balas aron sa unsa panahon, ikaw mahalokan gihapon nako.

My Dream Job

2011-08-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

La Playa
Matutinao, Badian

August 29, 2011

I hope there is a job in which I will just stare at the sea and count how many times people smile until the sea seems so small for their smiles. And when I will get tired (somehow), I will just drink a glass of water, and in the water, their smiles hide in its fluidity. Just look at how I drink, the water moves my lips, shaping it like I am smiling. And when I drink with their smiles I become part of the sea, and when I become part of the sea, I feel those people and I know how certain I am of my job.

feet

2011-08-28T09:03:00.000-07:00

Inspired by Picasso, I made my first abstract painting in blue. I am celebrating my own Blue Period. While doing this painting, I have felt one realization: my feet are more important than my hands. Why? It was my feet who taught me to paint this, not my hands.

A friend asked me once, “Why do you love taking picture of your feet?” to which I answered in three words: sense of place.

When I was still young, I used my feet to play with friends. I jumped on earth because there so many reasons to jump for. I ran in the grass because there so many playgrounds to run for. I walked in the sand, barefooted because there was a shoreline that seemed forever, and yes barefooted because the nakedness of my feet signified my innocence. And please do not ask me now how many times I had used my feet to do all those things I mentioned. Just look at my feet in person. It is a map to my past. It knows how to carefully explore security in the soil like how a little girl feels protection for her name in the mouth of her mother. If my feet are people, they are twin sisters and I will call them “Cour” and “Age” because if you put the two together it is courage. And courage is braver that bravery itself. Courage came from a Latin word “cor”; it symbolizes the word “heart”. And this is beautiful because it gives you a power of passion internally. The feet are the heart. I jump, run, and walk with my whole heart. With this line, I can say: I am enough. And the more I use my feet, the more I love with my heart, with all of my heart. But it is more heartedly if we don’t pretend the fact that it is better to see a feet near with another feet. You know a sense of nearness and farness when you see how the feet of a man and a woman tell a story. That we will not use it to kick someone, to hurt someone, and not even to leave someone, but to use it to navigate the world or even the universe, but yes you can, just look at a mother teaching her daughter to walk for the first time. The baby walks for the first time on earth. But the mother walks for the first time on the universe. In the history of mankind, the moon is so important just because there was a man who walked on it with its unique gravity. When we imagine, our eyes walk. It creatively runs on a circle, the slower you run, the more distance you have found. Even nature walks. Look at the waves, sometimes it walks smoothly in the sand like it is worshiping it, and it never gets tired. It will never. Never. Never. Never. Never.

Yet these feet of mine are not use to escape life but to keep only footprints. Remember, they are twin sisters and their names are the union of courage. A word for the innermost feelings, the courage to be imperfect like their owner, to feel strong with the whole heart, you see when my friend asked me why I keep on taking pictures of my feet I should have answered him in one word: heart.

The Blue Period

2011-08-26T17:50:00.000-07:00

How would you acknowledge pain if you haven’t known what you are missing?

I will admit this: I have the rarest presence. I rarely show myself during significant days. Birthdays of close friends, weddings of close relatives, death anniversary of my grandfather, graduation of my siblings, and even date with old friends. I never show up. The reason: it feels more real if life or new life is celebrated without a specific time, without a calendar. And I remain like this. In those moments of not being with people and celebration, I waste my time on unimportant things. Wasting my time means earning suffering, but at same time, knowing myself. Finding your identity is painful. It is just like this man, this man who mastered new ideas, Pablo Picasso. He knew his self more when his best friend died during their trip in Paris. At that time, he only painted using color blue. He saw everything in blue. He filtered himself together with the world and what left behind was blue. The external of his life was an appearance of deep misery. He called it The Blue Period. But I love blue. And not just me, as a matter of fact many people have mentioned to me that their favorite color is the hue of the sky. But it is only now that I sense more ache in this color. If blue is a direction. It is always going back.

Wasting time on visiting HIM,
buying poetry book (because I don't have time for novels),
and making self portrait.

A self portrait

Brooks' poetry

The church at USJR (because I don't like to visit USC)

Obligatory picture: the feet

Wall-E Syndrome

2011-08-14T04:06:00.000-07:00

After watching this movie, I have this feeling that I am afraid of the advancing technology. I decided to delete all my accounts: Facebook, Multiply, Friendster, Twitter and Formspring.

It means, this blog is my only way to communicate with people (excluding the e-mail). And the best also, hehe!

P.S. I'm glad I made this decision.

rain lesson, eyes lesson (these are life lessons)

2011-08-14T03:16:00.000-07:00

The rain, the eyes, these two have one thing in common: water. When I am happy, I want to be closer to water. Bath. Tea. But when sadness strikes, I want to be closer to salt water. Tears. Sea. This fluidity leads me to my incredible likeness for Ea, he is the god of water and of wisdom. According to the story, he is the creator of humanity.

Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight
on the empty sky.

-The Creation of Ea

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RAIN LESSON

August is the month of rain, the unforeseen rain.

Before, a woman needed to pause to have her portrait. She watered that seed of stillness. The result? Life in a frozen art. And someone looked at that portrait. Who? Me. I paused. Both of us paused, someone from the past, she, someone from the present, me.

I had never appreciated pausing until I realized that most of the time; I paused, not for a portrait, but to think. I was fully awake, but inside, eyes-closed. I wanted to close my eyes without closing. Pausing saw blindness. Blindness saw pausing. It was a private thing, a private thing between what I unfelt and felt. Surprisingly, it was taking place on its own. But for me, I could not give it a name. It was like it had winged those tiny yet saddened feelings inside my mind in the clouds. My mind said: “Take them away!” Then after I paused, it returned to my mind again. Yet, I kept asking: when did I start to pause in order to think, to misplace my burdens in the clouds. And when it rained, I needed to accept those burdens again because the clouds could no longer keep them.

The rains in the afternoon seemed constant. The earth got wet. Probably, I paused beyond my usual routine.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EYES LESSON

One thing that I cannot forget is how you gaze into my eyes genuinely each time you smile at me. That gladness in your eyes makes me feel that you are seeking something like you are filling the blanks, or perhaps guessing a multiple choice. I know you need an answer.

Even if you don’t tell me; I also know you are sort of finding yourself in me.

And every time you do it. I glance at somewhere like the nightsky and the disappearance of the stars in the midst of the city lights, especially when we are near the Fuente Circle. Perhaps, I glance also at the window or the wall clock in your room. Sometimes I glance at the paleness of the table in one of the malls in the city while you guess those karaoke songs. Sometimes, I just glance at the floor or the ground. I glance at something as long as it is somewhere, not your eyes. But that somewhere means: “You don’t have to; you are always part of me.”

I never tell you this. Perhaps these are forgotten words, and I forgot how to say it. Almost. But honestly M, nothing is ever forgotten. And nothing is ever gone. There is even more.

When a man losses his sight. His blindness becomes his hands, his ears, his taste buds, and his skin. Now the man has four eyes.

Quietness

2011-08-06T06:48:00.000-07:00

Love. God. Books. Mountain. Family. I am thankful of these words. It has no secrets. But it has quietness. Quietness. Quiet.

1. RAFI- I am thankful to have an opportunity to share my stories with the Parian kids. This October, I will learn the wisdom of the children.

2. BOOKS- Sometimes, I call you my “unplanned adventure” and I love it.

3. RESEARCH. Praying to have enough money to go to Indonesia to present my first paper.

4. POETRY. I always tell you that you are my first love. Thank you for helping me to be me. I become more human because of you.

5. TEACHING. Hey thanks job! And with you, I can travel for free. I am quite excited to go to UP-Diliman this September.

6. LOVE. I always believe that you are beautiful, painful, and of course, magical. And I still believe with your presence.

7. MOUNTAIN. You remind me of the best lessons in life. I am thankful that every time I climb, I harvest friendship and bravery.

8. FRIENDS (especially my best friends). You give me incalculable happiness.

9. FAMILY. Small things are personal. Big things are detached. And this is the main reason that I look at my family as the smallest part of myself.

"And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. Big Things lurk unsaid inside." — Arundhati Roy (The God of Small Things)

10. GOD. Someone says: I believe that God is near when He is far.

thanks pra! as always

2011-08-02T03:31:00.000-07:00

It was a beautiful Saturday night because you were with me. :)

Familiarity: The Tree

2011-07-24T19:47:00.000-07:00

I will never cut this tree. I will just remember it.

VISITED THIS GALLERY

We, artist, may live longer than the trees, yet die younger than our brushes.

You say: we must end this. I pause.

Then this place walls us. Restlessly,

there is a border that I carry.

It is as weighty as sadness, a perimeter

that hands me with a beautiful burden,

a line surrendering my own land to myself.

A fragile margin that narrates

my untold topography, but this boundary

is more of a shield. It armors me

with enough space, with enough love,

the kind of love that will love me back fully

I saw a soft copy of your letter. It was the longest letter you gave, and the last. I said to myself before, “Once I can read it without crying. I can finally understand how empty these words are.” Before, I believed that I found myself in your words. There was something about it that expanded those smallest things that didn’t seem important to me, for example, my hand. I appreciated my handwriting during that time I wrote you letters when you were still in Borongan, your hometown. I was like studying distance in those letters that I only gave you when you returned to Cebu. And after that, you never mentioned about those inks even until our separation, probably because those words were familiar to you.

But I never had the chance to tell you this: “Mar, familiarity is special.”

And just two weeks ago, after a long run in the oval at Abellana. It was almost eight in the evening, I was about to go home when I saw a familiar face near the corner of the street. It was too familiar that I didn’t need to ask myself who. It was you. Your structure was an entrance to the beautiful trees at the seashore of La Libertad. I felt the waves in my feet with your presence and I touched the sand between my fingers. When you talked to me, I heard the crashing of the sea, tasted the saltiness of your water-like voice.

Then I remembered, it was almost eight in the evening. Yet I only recalled the night sky, it was quite familiar, it was like the night when we entwined our hands together for the first time. And this familiarity, it moved from my head to my heart. Unexpectedly, the space where we met was the same place where you told me to sacrifice for our relationship. And our “hi” and “hello” were familiar too, yet its stories were trackless, isolated in the dark.

Until you asked where I was going, then I said, “Home.” And at the back of my head, I said, “Before, home was you.” Then you gave me a sign that you wanted to come with me in the jeepney stop where you first said a familiar line: Lab you. But I didn’t understand why I was in a hurry to go home. And yes we talked, but for a little. Then I searched for a jeepney, and said goodbye.

I got surprised that you waited for the jeepney (where I was) to go before you crossed the street. It was just like before, yes a familiar scene.

But I was more surprised with myself, because by the end of the evening, all I felt was nothing. And this feeling was not familiar. Then I remember what it was like tonight. It aged in my memory. I feared that a boundary was circling between the two us. No more leaves and roots inside your aura, I sensed a detachment. And even if many trees were everywhere during that night, I didn’t feel it. I guessed I told these words silently: “Mar, familiarity is special.” But I didn't forget you. How could I ever forget that sadness? Sadness? Nope. How could I ever forget that once in my life you made me happy? Better.

And before I went to sleep, I saw a soft copy of your last letter. It felt good, I no longer cried.

Finally, I wrote this one for you:

Tree,

I feel a sense of happiness knowing that I do not end up with you. Perhaps, I want to be the only girl in your life who has the sweatiest hands, the only girl who first hold your hands so tightly, the only girl who grasp your hands violently but with intense fragility. Or maybe, I want to be one of those letters hidden somewhere in your dusty cabinet that you will never share to your new girlfriend or to your future wife. Those old letters with the little drawings of ship and trees, and when you read it by chance, you will remember my handwriting on those envelopes and how I write the word: Hon. Or if you will not remember my handwriting. Then maybe, you will just remember your words and my words when I say: What if we will end? And you reply: Don’t say bad words. Sometimes, I want to be that singing candle who sings happy birthday for you. And you will remember me accidentally when someone sings happy birthday.

You will feel I am still there when you hear someone says: surprise.

Or maybe you will think of me when you see a dolphin or a mountain, or you will think of me when you will remember that it takes 50 miles, a travel from Cebu to La Libertad, for you to find me. Surely, you will think of me when you eat choco moron. And you will recall how I long for that food, how your hand burns when you reheat the choco moron for me, and how it bridges our very first conversation. And if you see a rice field, you will know me again and how I listen to your struggles and stories. Maybe, you will recall my innocence whenever you cross the street in Fuente Circle. Then, your memories of me, your familiarity of me will make you smile in the strangest way.

I want to be with you wordlessly, I wish I will not age inside your heart. Yes, these are the times that I am very glad I am not with you anymore. You will not really understand what I am saying. But just remember, whenever I see a tree, its brown trunk, its leaves, its shade and scent, and its tallness especially near the shore with the waves of the sea. Remembering you is enough.

Cinds

airport, mt. pulag, and baguio city (perfect for places poetry)

2011-07-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

Airport- a place for good byes, see you soon, take care, come back home, and of course welcome home

Mt. Pulag- a place of the clouds, oceans of clouds

Baguio City- a place, a place for a perfect vacation (inside a refrigerator, haha!)

PICTURES

because I don't know how to write these places quickly with sound and sense

the sun in Mt. Pulag

at the airport, the saddest place

Strawberry Taho!

No money to buy, haha!

so lonely

the loneliest

Pulag!

place, shoes

again, airport, more than the air, more than the port

Sammy aka like Naruto's Mentor (guess who)


Fog

a tribute to the waves and water, from your apostle

2011-07-02T12:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Sea,

I am like you now.

We have a hidden sadness each time we outline the shore with our waves. Yet the distance from the seashore is a form of gladness in knowing how far we go away and how soon we return.

I am like you now.

Your apostle,

C.

Because I need to write

2011-06-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

and I remember a kiss, a confession:

Mohangyo ko og Nobena

Ang unang halok usa ka pag-ampo.
Ang among mga palad mag-abot,
magkahiusa sa kahagip-ot.
Isag-ulo namo ang matag titik
nga among itugyan sa kahitas-an
hangtod mopiyong ming duha.

Ipaambit namo ang kahilom sa isig usa.
Ang akong wa-it ug ngabil manguros
sa iyang agtang hangtod tultulon niya
ang akong simod. Sa iyang baba,
daygon ko ang kalibotan. Sa iyang dila,
mokumpisal ko sa akong mga sala.

Her Story

2011-06-25T05:33:00.000-07:00

History of the First Kiss

My first kiss was a prayer. I memorized it. In the beginning, we shared silence. And my lips made a sign of a cross on his forehead. Then I grasped his left hand like we were praying. With him, I praised. I confessed. I gave thanks. And I hoped very much for us. But the answer was: no.

This history was always like the first time. Yet it was the past. Important dates and places were nothing. And I freely accepted it. But this history was the most beautiful reminiscence (without the hope of his return). This memory about him and me, it always made me happy, always made me happy. Always.

A History of Happiness

This semester, I am teaching Children’s Lit, Journalism, Humanities, World Lit and Phil Lit. I know it sounds very difficult, and of course, tiring. But I feel very happy. This happiness is unknown, the kind of happiness that is hidden outside the pages of a book. And I need to relearn its source.

I will never get tired teaching my students.

History of Home

Thank you GOD, you fix all the inner conflicts of my home. Finally, the cold war between me and my younger sister is over. Again, thank you GOD for helping me to forgive others, to forgive myself. Thank you GOD for the internal peace.

HER (story)

Vintage Car

The bells at the back

An obligation: feet photo

Bicycle lover, but not bicycle rider

The silver altar

The handwriting of Blessed Mother Teresa

The best way to end

Mafe, Mafe Memories

2011-06-17T07:13:00.000-07:00

Because I need to write again

2011-06-17T01:17:00.000-07:00

and I feel her pain (Medusa)

Ang Gitipigan ni Medusa

Didto sa imong hardin
namunga og mga bato,
ug dili mga gihay.
Matag hulagway nila,
ningkumkom sa imong
mga sugilanon.
Sa kalikopan sa imong ulo,
hagbay lang ningbuswak
ang mga bitin, ningkulikot,
gilamat ang tibuok nimong lawas.

Apan sa kinalawman
sa imong pagkaaliwas,
wala nimo sila suginli
nga ikaw, buot mong wala
na kay kalimutaw.
Ang mga tawo
nga buot mong mahigala,
gihimo nimong mga biktima,
buot mo na lang mopiyong, mohilak.

Wala nimo sila suginli
nga ikaw sa una usa ka
babayeng gahalad kang Athena.
Birhen. Buotan. Matahom.
Sa dihang nilinog,
nigawas sa yuta si Hades,
naugdaw ang imong lawas,
nangalarag ang imong buhok.

Ug usa lang ang kamatuoran niini:
gihukman ka nga walay hustisya.