nine

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Day 9. 29 Dec 2013.

eVERything reMINDS ME oF YoU, and I wANt to EScaPE it AlL.


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eight

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Day 8. 28 Dec 2013.

At one point, it was all flowers. They are meticulously arranged, with great care, so each petal and stem and thorn is perfectly seen and perfectly appreciated. In another, it was all flowing lines, like lifestream. It follows no path but it flows freely, like what one’s soul should be in its path to achievement of “greater things.” In here, though, there’s nothing but chaos and discourse—why should it be perfect? Anything I put in there, just to fill the space. Just to perfect the art of preoccupation.


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seven

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Day 7. 27 Dec 2013.

Sometimes it rains. Sometimes, hope, like a beautiful scene, breaks. Sometimes it turns upside down, but I like it. They’re all in boxes, and they form my life.

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marilyn

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"Here’s what I remember most: her embrace. Her belief in me. And the joy she gave. That was her gift. When I think of her now, I think of that time when a dream came true. And my only talent was not to close my eyes."

- Colin Clark (My Week With Marilyn, 2011)

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blue

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Day 4. 24 Dec 2013.

Swimming in an ocean of tumulous thoughts, I think of nothing but them. If I could wish for one thing, just for this moment, I wish for an asphyxiation of the brain. Then I would no longer think. Then I would no longer feel and I would no longer care about things I could not—and will never be able to—control.

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violet

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Day 3. 23 Dec 2013.

I feel it burst inside me, like a reckoning. I know it is hard to contain, like an undefinable hunger or thirst for something that has not existed yet.


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orange

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Day 2. 22 Dec 2013. 

As it spilled itself, I was left hanging on a precipice of uncertainty.

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wandering star

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"Does the sun not shine for us all? That question runs endlessly through my mind day in and day out. The man who asked it over a year ago now is dead."

- Wandering Star (J.M.G. L Clézio)

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red

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Day 1. 21 Dec 2013.

I search for eons, I search for stars, and all I see is a big expanse of nothingness.

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hands

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These hands are not your model's hands. They were never soaked with milk, pampered with soothing oils and creams, and trimmed and cleaned like a rich woman's hands should deserve.

These hands are not rich. They never signed a check worth millions, inspected clothes worth more than a normal man's monthly wage, dined with the elite, and brushed with other hands that could change the world in a snap.

But these hands---dirty, bruised, and calloused---knew hardship and pain. And these hands will carry your load, soothe your ache, tousle your hair, encase you with warmth, and try to give you hope and love.

Because time taught these hands a lesson, and they learned that lesson well---soon, everything will be alright. We will all get out of this. It will work itself out.

Until then, these hands will continue to hold yours and will not let go. And together, we will make it. Together.

I hope these hands will be more than enough, for this is all I can offer you.

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null

It's finally over, and instead of celebrating that she actually made it, all she can do is sigh in relief.

Four months. It really is over. It's finally over.

The torment is over.

Deep in her heart, however, all she feels is remorse. She wonders if other people could actually feel what she feels at the moment. If they could understand why she's griping over it so much.

Eloquence goes out the window as different words come to her at once: value for money, justice for effort, intellectual capabilities, but what really retains is this: quality, quality, quality.

She was expecting so much quality, maybe a little too much of it, only to be sorely disappointed in the end. She was supposed to be excited, considering it's her first venture. But no. All she feels still is remorse.

So she asks herself if she has even learned a thing she didn't already know after four months. No. Nothing.

Wasn't this all--all those days and hours spent--meant for self-development? So she could be a better person and give back in return?

Sadly, it never happened. And that's what broke her heart so much. Such wasted months--and pesos--they were. Each penny saved for nothing.

Do you understand now?

taken

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She asked her if she'd ever really felt it, felt it so much that it tears her inside out.

Felt it enough to lose sleep, to lose hope, to lose life. Enough to be so obsessed about it. 

She said no, that time.

She does not know him enough, and he surely does not know her. As it is, only a flimsy piece of technology bridged them together.

And here she is, staring at his face, and all she wants to do is just tear that ring out. It looked beautiful on his finger, like it always belonged there, but it only made her feel that her world is coming to an end.

It feels like a slap in her face, and this disgusts her since she knows she does not deserve to feel such anger, such sense of vindication. Disgusts since she did it again, unknowingly falling hard for the wrong person again: a person anyone is prohibited to love because he is taken. 

She guessed she already knew. She can see it from his smiles. She can sense it in the way he looked so assured, so at peace with himself. Surely that person could not be that happy alone; he is in love, and happily at peace with it.

Thus, she blamed the other girl. Why make him this way, when he can not be loved? Why make him so happy, which only drew her to him?

And at the back of her mind she asked himself: is this obsession enough?

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domestic

There’s a churning madness deep within her, carefully reined in by a decade’s worth of training, training and training.

A good girl is an honest girl. A good lady does not say what she thinks, what she feels. A modest woman has no right to feel affection for a man much clearly higher in rank and attributes than her. A good woman knows her place, and that is to stay silent, let herself scarce, and never show an inch of power she could have held when a greater man is present. She only yields, yields and waits, waits. What she feels does not matter when the man has clearly nothing to do with her.

A man once said to her that life is unfair like that. She might have kept a cold facade that moment, a head slightly tilting in interest, but those words had broken her well-kept resolve.

It's hideously irritating to think how she would not bat an eyelash at any prospect of mental, physical or psychological attack, but give her words delivered by a calm demeanor and she runs away for the hills to heal her weak heart. 

Truth. It's the truth she can't accept--that she could never get what she hoped to have, could never be what she wanted to be no matter how hard she tried, could never receive anything when all she had done is give, give, give.

It's times like this she feels much like that red-cloaked figure from a certain tale. Always stubborn to get what she wants, but she faces the big, bad wolf and she cringes and hide in her red hood.

Until, something, of course, snaps.

Then she would feel so inclined to touch the wolf, his fangs open wide for carnage. And for a moment, she wishes to get lost in it, the madness, that state of not thinking at all and just feel, attack, everything be damned.

What she fears the most, though, is that through all these ponderings, it was her who continued to prod the wolf with words and beastly eyes. Bite me, bite me, she would chant, and her claws would come out, beauty never an afterthought as she opens red, red eyes and lunge. Bloodshed would come, and victory would be hers.

She knows she could have that power, that madness, but then there are years, and years. And it just kept on getting reined in. 

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starless

The nights are especially worst when rain approaches.

So much cold, so much longing for warmth. Sometimes she wondered why she needed it, the warmth, when she feels just so cold inside.

She can be what one can consider a warrior after all. She can sustain extreme temperatures just as much as she can temper day-to-day struggles, and this was just one of the mellower ones she has experienced in her lifetime.

Watching the stars fade at the open window she chose not to close, she kept herself warm with her blankets as she gradually lulled herself to sleep.

No matter what people say, two years is still not that long a time to completely move on.

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smolder

The line is lost, and the soul seeks your furnace.

May 03, 2013
12:23 PM


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"But I love you," she cried, "more than life itself, more than these tears that remind me how much I must not love you. I do, I do, I really do. Is that not enough?"

"No," he said so simply, his dark eyes glinting with something she will never begin to understand.

"Nothing is ever enough for love."

crazy zombie workmates

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When this met me upon opening my bottom drawer a while ago, I didn't know if I should be amused, annoyed or intrigued (in a very disturbing way).

In the end, I settled for downright terrified. It looked a little too similar to Plants vs Zombies, don't you think?

Pirates

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Those who know me know how much a freak I can be when it comes to pirates.

Back then, when I was a kid, I enjoyed jumping from the top of our closets and fly like Captain Cook as if he had the powers of Peter Pan. Then land in the comforts of our beds and giggle like crazy, the taste of flight still on my tongue.

Sometimes, I never get to land on the bed. But that would be another story I never want to disclose.

It does not come out as a surprise then if I stalk on Pirates of the Carribean like a ravenous wolf. I love pirates and the exciting stories they keep within them, hooks and all.

And, then, there's also what we call anime.

Those who know me know how I never got over this obsession.

Until now, I still pine on the latest episodes of Bleach, Naruto and One Piece while I reminisce on the hundred others I've just finished watching.

Now, here comes One Piece, which I have also grown to love.

And here comes Captain Jack of Pirates.

Bring them all together, and what would it be?

The result is this.

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V

 

I honestly LOLed myself to sleep for this cuteness overload.

Credit goes to LPSPALMER for this wonderful art I got to see back there in Deviantart.



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Iris

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The iris will never look as lovely as when it knows that one is grieving.

When I have long given up on the fact that I might still find the one I've been looking for all this time, I somewhat knew that the irises were blooming lovingly at a very surprising rate, milking my grief for what it's worth. (It wasn't worth a lot).

The same happens to a tragic love story that happened way back in the post-medieval times, when a samurai, in his blinded rage to protect the one he has learned to love, unintentionally shot his sword through his lover's chest, killing her instantly.

It was a rain of blood, so much blood, they say.

And the irises had been the prettiest for the next seasons after that, which still left a lot of people marveling why.

The wounds that I keep inside are feeding the irises alive, more alive than I have ever been. And though I know that someone out there is happily wondering at such beauty of nature, I can't help but be selfish, thinking who would ever sacrifice his or her own happiness to make mine real.

We are all irises in our own right—we all should know that.

But first, I have to find a way that would make me believe that loving you from afar will already be enough, or the irises will continue to strive.


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Mansanitas

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I once pondered on the beauty of a profession, probably because someone dear to me has asked it for so many times in so many ways for the past years.

And for so many times and in so many ways, I've tried to answer her. Most of my answers were half-baked, though, probably because I was also not too happy with the way things have progressed in my profession.

(At that time, I blandly called profession a 'job sans happiness'.)

The breakthrough came today, at 5:02 PM, as I looked beyond my office window with my office mate, marveling at a mansanitas tree.

Do you know that a mansanitas does not grow that easily? my office mate shares. I tilted my head towards her direction, silently telling her I was listening.

A mansanitas tree does not grow from its seeds. Neither does it grow from its fruit. And it simply cannot grow from its cuttings, although its wood is of fine quality.

The mansanitas fruit has to be eaten by a specific bat species first, and only from this bat's 'poo-poo' can a mansanitas land on the earth and multiply.

This is why you should always protect any mansanitas tree that you see; after all, the bats are getting hunted because people always mistake them for the dark arts simply because they are nocturnal, she adds, as we both looked wistfully at the tree, which I now stare with different eyes.

Things are usually taken at face value, especially in this day and age where life passes you by in a snap that it leaves you less time to appreciate it.

So try to pause, and try to look at the things around you, discover it once more. Relearn it. Explore it. Until it becomes an entirely different thing altogether because you tried to understand it in a way that only your heart and mind combined can.




That is why I believe I am blessed when I can experience learning and exploring new things out of something so common in every day of my life.

This is the beauty of my profession. What is yours?


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