My Winamp is now playing "sucked out" by Superdrag. :o)  They all bring me back to days I thought I'd forgotten. Being taught by Paul how to headbang (you gotta take that ponytail off!) at the Student Union Building, watching bands practice their Eddie Vedder scowls, singing "now this is absolute reality, reality, reality!" while a fat man from UPJC belts to bad bass. 

I danced to "Whip It" when I was in fourth grade at our company christmas party, bopped to Love Shack with my sisters, sang If You Leave pretending I was Molly Ringwald, the works. I was in grammar school and I learned all about the 80s' magic from my sisters who were just too into it all. Hairdresser on Fire. Let me take your hand I'm shaking like milk.  I even remember asking them if The Lotus Eaters really ate Lotuses. :o)

My ex Lou once said, "the greatest tragedy in life is that there is no background music." Oh, but there is. They come and go, and if you're fortunate you find them serendipitously, or they find you. And then it all comes back, beer-drunken nights running back to the dorm from Shakey's Pizza in Calamba, passing out on the classic gin-bilog piñacolada (paul's recipe!) with M&Ms as pulutan. My roommate Ana Lascano falling asleep on a deck of cards after several rounds of Pusoy Dos. 

Hey little thing let me light your candle cos momma I'm sure hard to handle now, gets around! I sang to this, working summers at our Magallanes branch tuned in to 99.5RT.

Those were the good old days, before we all started singing "Where Does the Time Go?" I feel free and on a speedtrain to a new life, not too late at 26, yeah?

I can't wait!

"She's a brick and I'm drowning slowly, off the coast and I'm heading nowhere." - Ben Folds Five.

260902
Fedex Tracking Number      836872605399 
DeliveredMAKATI CITY PH  09/26/2002 12:37 
On FedEx vehicle for deliveryMAKATI CITY PH  09/26/2002 08:49 
Arrived at FedEx Destination LocationMAKATI CITY PH  09/26/2002 07:39 
Arrived at FedEx RampPARANAQUE PH  09/26/2002 04:32 
Left FedEx RampOLONGAPO CITY PH  09/26/2002 02:27 
Package statusOLONGAPO CITY PH  09/26/2002 02:12 
Package statusOLONGAPO CITY PH  09/26/2002 02:12 
Arrived at Sort FacilitySUBIC BAY FREEPORT PH  09/26/2002 01:29 
Left FedEx RampNARITA-SHI JP  09/25/2002 12:34 
Arrived at FedEx RampNARITA-SHI JP  09/25/2002 12:33 
Left FedEx Sort FacilityANCHORAGE AK  09/24/2002 11:27 
Arrived at Sort FacilityANCHORAGE AK  09/24/2002 07:28 
Left FedEx Sort FacilityINDIANAPOLIS IN  09/24/2002 04:51 

Package Contents: Greeting Card, NYC Subway Map, Note, Letter from Emiko, Photos

Response:
I got your package after lunch. I opened it up and read your note first, then took a look at the map, then your card and the photos, and then emiko's letter. :o) 

it's a strange feeling that's come over me, seeing the photos. i had numbed myself with my set, looking at them over and over each day, that  i was surprised to find my chest heavy looking at the ones you sent. you're right, those are excellent photos. i especially like the one taken before we left boracay, followed closely by the tagaytay kiss, then the parao photos. i love your snow pic too. 

i'm bothered. i'm bothered by your eyes staring right back at me. i think these are the closest shots of you looking into the camera. they haunt me, as if calling for me to enter them and your world, i struggle to find tasks i need to accomplish and pile them up on my feet, and then i hate myself for not being able to just let go of everything here and fly away to where those eyes of yours lead. 

i may be over-analyzing again, but looking at the pictures you sent i can't help but feel like crying. i miss you. i miss your face looking back at me, i miss your skin and how it feels on my cheek, my hands, and in my mouth. i miss your strength, your beauty, your passion. i miss us. and how good it feels to just be together doing nothing, just being swallowed whole. 

i love you. it's a fact whose truth shines brightly, making all other truths and past emotions seem dull. it burns like a warm glow in the chest at first, and then a pounding pain that feels like it's sucking in the life out of everything around me, looking for you. 

and of all the other things you made me feel today, one stands out from the rest. and this is the overpowering desire to be near you, soon, more for my sake than yours. the farther i am from you the more it feels like i'm bleeding from a chest wound slowly to my death. 

drip. drip. drip. 

250902
::::Finally working on the poetry pages, not done though, since I realized I don't have copies of some pieces offline (ninny!). Only this up at this time.:::::

In the meantime...for your reading pleshuh:
 

It was a dusty box filled with yellowing socks that we passed by each morning to fish out a pair that didn’t look too worn or holed out.  My brother and Ramses and I would argue as to which pair we would wear for the day, and the spats were worse when we each of us picked a sock from the same pair. There were knee socks, ankle socks with balls at the heel, yellow striped socks, you name it, it was in that box buried beneath all the other plain white ones. 

None of them were new. We had to wear them with rubber bands to keep them up, and even then it was a task of picking the right rubber band which wasn’t too loose (like the big office rubber bands that came in boxes) or too tight (the yellow ones with red and green stripes on them, the ones you use to make stars or Chinese garters with) to bite on our skin.  Most of the time, however, we’d end the day with rubber bands on our legs and socks which had been swallowed whole by the shoes we were wearing. And if we were unlucky enough, our father would notice that we had rubber bands on, and reprimand us on the dangers of gangrene. 

I remember pulling up my socks as a major part of  walking while I was growing up. If I was in PE class it would be worse, as “calesthenics” (an exercise craze in the 80s) would warrant the pulling up of socks each time I reached for my toes. For my seventh birthday I got my prized Mighty Kid sneakers with the zippers on the sides for easy access, and I faintly recall my sadness at not having good socks to wear them with.

Tough life? Not really. I had three other siblings, and socks, like crayons,  were in surplus.  Aside from the policy of “No new crayons or colored pencils”  (all these coloring materials were in an empty Pringles can, and it was impossible to draw anything in a single color because they had all chipped and stuck to each other), was the policy of “No new socks.”  There  was a whole box filled with socks anyway, and we could not justify why we had to get new pairs unless we threw them all out. And of course we couldn’t, because we wouldn’t have any socks to use until the new ones were purchased. These would come like manna from heaven, a pair at a time from the sale racks of SM, and like the hungry we would fight as to who got to wear it first. Usually, by the time I got to wear it, they’d be loose already, and fall off again from having been stretched by my siblings’ bigger feet.

When I think about it now, I guess my parents just didn’t realize how pathetic we had become with our yellowing and hardening socks falling down on our ankles. There were quite a number of days when I’d go to school with socks that didn’t match, and I had to fold one because it was longer than the other, which was good since then I could hide a rubber band underneath it. 

And then, there was a miracle. After much pestering, my mother finally agreed to buy me the Marks & Spencer socks that everyone in St. Scho was wearing. I was a junior, and after agreeing to wear with shame the socks that her officemate crocheted (which didn’t fall off, but had a top garter that left my shins sore and my feet numb and the rest of the sock looking like a sack) for three years, she finally took me to pick out the St. Michael’s socks I wanted. 
They were a hundred pesos a pair, a lot of money at that time, and after rebutting her every argument on my socks getting lost in the wash (I had to promise to wash them myself every night and watch out for them by counting that all were present at all times), she finally bought me three pairs! I was ecstatic, and I wore them proudly with my boyish shoes and Snoopy bow-biters. 

Every night I would take them off and wash them carefully with bath soap. And through the months they got darker and darker but I couldn’t make the maids wash and bleach them, so I just made the most out of them, sewing up their holes after a while; even if by the time I got them everyone else was wearing another style already – knee socks now, and they were 200 pesos a pair so I didn’t even dream of it!

What I learned from all of this was how to make socks fit. The over-the-toes maneuver was good and more comfortable than folding it underneath, but you couldn’t do that with girly shoes or Spartan sneakers (Keds white sneaker lookalikes, but of course we’d die before we’d get the real thing!) because the socks would bulge on your toes and you’d look like you had a case of elephantiasis. I also learned that newly washed socks usually don’t fall off if you don’t stretch them too much when you put them on. And that it was okay to wear the ones which didn’t have heels, if you were wearing your high-cut rubber shoes or boots. Doubling socks also reduced the socks-at-ankles incidence. And the best rubber bands were the thick and flat ones, but they also hurt the most.

Looking back at it now, I’m glad we didn’t have too much of everything. We were not poor and what we got was a far cry from what our parents had, growing up during the war. My father always told us the story of being given one pencil at the start of each school year, and if he broke it or lost it, he wouldn’t get another one until the next year.  We had so many socks! Not very useable ones, but at least they were there. Sure, we got teased a lot by our classmates, but it took us no sooner to realize that all of that was superficial, and that we were much smarter than all of them combined. I believe this was the lesson our parents had wanted us to learn.

Decades later, when we were all earning, we each bought ourselves the biggest sets of Crayolas and Coleen colored pencils. Ate Aya even went as far as buying every available color of Keds sneakers!  I still buy my socks at the SM sale rack at 3 pairs for a hundred, and fortunately they make socks better now and they no longer fall off. For me there is nothing that compares to the smell and feel of new white socks, and I don’t think you can have too many good pairs. 

The only problem is, I wear only one pair from the three and wear it out before using the other two. So I can smell the rest, and know that in my box there will always be a perfect pair I can use at any given time. :o)
 

240902
 From e55ential: "Ki's writing brings back the past, refreshing and reinforcing memories, making it impossible to repress a smile. Youth is happiness. Innocence the shell holding it in. Guarding it against the world that you're not ready for. How long one holds out against the ravages of Banality, and this shell through willful blindness perverts into  Ignorance is a subject worthy of philosophers and dreamers. What's the magic glue that holds it all together? I only know as much as you. But whatever it is, if it's good and true - keep it alive and strong. Keep it pure."

Thank you, Petrol, for your writing. It is always a pleasure to know that you're being read. And that your readers think. As Libay's old pager greeting used to say "Make contact. Otherwise it's an awful waste of space." (Jodie Foster, Contact)
 

220902
I grew up on Judy Blume, Roald Dahl, and A.A. Milne. I don't remember now if these books were my sisters', but I do recall having been made to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after being disturbed by the movie verson. "Oompah-doompah, doopadidoo, if you touch your poopoo* it will turn blue," was a song my sisters made up and my brother and I would sing. I believe it came from that movie, where a girl turned blue after eating too much bubble gum. 

I had a magical childhood, having been left alone most of the time. If I wasn't reading I'd be building box homes, hanging out at the carpentry shop, or discovering the then barren Better Living Subdivision on my 300-peso ("segunda mano!" my dad exclaimed after coming home with it from Bangkal one day) red bicycle whose left brake lever was so loose it could assume various positions. I called it my "kambyo," and I "changed gears" uphill or downhill, and actually felt the difference. 

There was this girl named Bekya who would walk to our house from the other street to play with me. She was the daughter of a neighbor's maid  and we'd go to their house and explore her "amo" Rudy Dandan's mansion, which had a swimming pool full of moss and frogs, and lots of hidden rooms which had been deserted and where goats would scatter their pellet excreta in. I never did see the infamous Rudy Dandan, who was supposed to be some rich gay heir of Doña Soledad who owned Better Living, although once I think I saw one of his young and handsome lovers topless behind a glass door. 

Rudy Dandan also owned vast lots filled with trees, and we'd climb up the camachile and  sampaloc trees and sit on the branches eating their fruits while watching carabaos bathe in their respective mudholes. On lucky days, we'd ride our bikes far, far away to the quadra (horse farm), making sure to keep it a secret from Papa who would inspect our feet for cuts and scold us if he found out, since the tetanus bacteria thrives in horse dung, he used to say. 

It was Bekya, her dog Snoopy, and sometimes Dandan's nephew Chris, who once made me lie down to kiss me on the cheek and had Bekya push him down on my face so I couldn't move. There was also Russell and Terrence next door, who came only during the summer like King and his twin five-year-old brothers Peter and Paul who locked the door to show me their uncircumcised penises. 

those were enchanting days, back when Paranaque was still a province and our street still wasn't a national road. Today if you take your bike out of the front gate of your house, you'd get hit by a car. No difference really, since the quadra is gone, the camachile/tamarind/carabao field is now a village, the kids are all grown up anyway, and Rudy Dandan is rumored to be dead. 

I thought about all of this now because recently my sister made me write down a list of books my nephew paolo should read. and so thru email i wrote titles like Stuart Little, Freckle Juice, Then Again Maybe I Won't, etc., and I heard he like Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing best; when he and ate aya would leave Allan alone on evenings to watch the Filipino Channel. 

I also got my bookshelf today, a small palochina shelf I had made in Laguna a few years back which holds around fifty of the books I grew up reading. I look forward to the day I will hand these down to my child, who like Paolo may never be able to climb tall trees and be free to run around unsupervised, break limbs, get  scratched by the fences I used to jump over or just sit on some branch and watch a whole day pass, but maybe in between the Cartoon Network and pizza, she would get to have at least a small part of the magic I had growing up in Japan Street, Better Living, c.1980.
 

--------------------------------------------
*poopoo: n., equivalent of pipi in the Sison household.
 

(Today I found my old medals too, from the yearly bookwriting contest in Montessori, that's why i decided to write this all down tonight. I hope you enjoyed it.) 
 

210902
It is on weekends that I come full circle with all that I feel for you. Perhaps it's the absence of a workload and pre-assigned waking and sleeping times, or maybe it's just the bed without you in it.

The first and last times we made love you had your watch on, maybe it was a foreboding of some sort. we didn't have enough time, and we found ourselves cramming each and every emotion, sight, smell and taste into our heads, knowing we would spend months playing them over and over to pacify our hearts, furious at our separation.

And now we are here. Didn't we build these spaces strong? Weren't we proud to fix for ourselves homes where we could move around not wanting anything that wasn't in close proximity? We find ourselves in these enclosures feeling empty, now that i know what if feels like to have you moving about my house and you can already feel me moving about in yours. 

The shiny aluminum chair stands there, and I hate it. Guests who pass by for the first time always tell me how cool it looks, and I used to smile with pride at my acquisition. Now I want to slam it against the wall, if only to prove it is nothing more than a few pieces of metal riveted together, now that you're not sitting in it with my head on your lap. 

1200 Curfews (Disc One, Track 4) plays behind me: it's coming on christmas. they're cutting down trees, putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. i wish had a river i could skate away on. i wish i had a river so wide, teach my feet to fly.  this song is you and me. it don't snow  here, it stays pretty green. i'm gonna make a lot of money then i'm gonna quit this crazy scene. and oh baby didn't you just love me so naughty and make me weak in my knees? 

we hold on to songs. words. smells. anything familiar or picturesque, to get us through this distance that goes against our destiny. forgive me for sometimes asking for more than you can feel or give at one time just to keep me sane. it's all i have for now.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

you call. you listen to me giddy in between receivers and you tell me what a relief it is to hear me laugh again. you're here now, and i forget all that i was worried about. 
 
 

190902
Subject: Kurosawa and Tyler

I'm in between days. I'm also PMS-ing. These are times I wish I were less of a thinker and more of a sleeper, although I do admit if I just had you to hold me right now I'd be fine. 

I am a functional mess. Functional due to my consciencious and seemingly responsible personality, mess because I do not know where to start cleaning up my life when the endpoint is a blur. The house is in disarray, except for the bed which i've tried to make each morning, but i've given that up too today. the sink is full of dishes, the floor unswept, laundry undone. Cat fed, work hectic but tasks accomplished, classes attended, stomach not empty. I breathe, eat, sleep, walk but god knows i do not live.

not when the only world i know is far away, in the arms of the one i love. i kick myself for not being able to pull myself out of this hold, wishing i were stronger, less attached, more together. yet how can i do that when all aspects of my life suddenly and simultaneously decide to move in full throttle? breathe. my heart is continuously racing, even when i sleep, i wake up with the same nervousness and anxiety i slept with. sometimes i wish i could just stop and rest, but if i do something's gonna overtake me, something's not gonna get done, and someone's gonna be upset. 

i need a prayer. i need a prayer for strength, for energy, for peace and for acceptance of whatever fate falls upon me. i need a prayer to get me to the only place i want to be, and i vow to work on it from there.

i need to weep. i need to weep for the multitudes of ways i long for you, ache for you, want and need you in my life right now. i need to weep for the fact that our fate, though certain, remains in the hands of those who will not even think twice about lives they make or break. i need to weep for my body, my mind and my eyes, battered by the pressures of my day to day. 

i need to be with you. if there's one thing that's bothering me right now, it's every single thing i see. every stimulus is a reminder of the things i will miss in the only life that i've known, but realizing time and again that without you, all of these miniscule objects and pleasures i find joy in will mean nothing. 

whoever said that happiness is a state of mind obviously has never met you. or me. or found a love like ours that overtakes and swallows whole people like us who used to take pride in being invincible. wallowing is sex for depressives, i always say, and in my misery, my scowl that is permanently etched on my face when i am not talking to you, i realize that despite all i'm going through in my life right now, hearing a single breath from you makes it all worthwhile. 

what do the next few weeks hold for us? i've believed in miracles and i've seen them. i've also believed in lost causes with all of my heart and soul. 

my favorite quote comes from Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in Fight Club: "Only when you lose everything can you be free to do anything."  I've lost more than everything, been free to do anything. now all i want is you.

kurosawa says "the harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true"  i'm dreaming so hard the rest of my life is materializing inside my head. without you it's gonna pass me by.

take me home, baby. 
 

160902
Will wonders never cease?  I told my dad of my plans today, and instead of the grand drama i expected to stem from his disappointment atmy  turning away from my responsibilities to the family corporation and my MBA, he says:

"It's an affair of the heart!" and wished me well.

Incidentally, my soon-to-be best bklyn bud Petrol wrote on his e55ential journal:

"Is Ki coming to our fair city? Only yesterday, I remember our adventures. Lying in the grass, crossing the fields, hiking up the hill.  Has it been eleven years already? The unconfirmed revelation hits in the face like icewater. Is it a Yuletide reunion you're going for, dear friend? 

Life in its unpredictability and convergence has a way of converting the most skeptical into believers. Unmaking impossibilities into true possibles."

You've always been a master of words, dear Paulie. 

We travel paths that may seem to meet at the wrong points and we choose one way over the other. We may be alone in these choices but what to we do? All roads lead to you.  :o)

Believe. 
 

150902
Subject: Fabrication

I’ve begun packing. It started with the dusty boxes of old clothes under my bed. I fished each piece out from the pile of crumpled fabrics, and realized that I knew the origin of each sock and every shirt, from the sources of the stains and tears on my dresses, to the littlest feeling I had when I bought, received and wore each piece of clothing.

At the bottom of one box I found my scrub shirts and my white doctor’s coat. I ignored the dust that had accumulated from years of neglect, and started to smell them. Scrubs always felt good at my fingertips. I recalled the many surgeries and farm visits, the running around the Vet Med complex in UPLB, and wiping the sweat off my forehead on their sleeves in the middle of a very bloody splenectomy.  I unfolded the white jacket and found stains on the collar from when I last used it at clinical duty at the Diliman Hospital, and perhaps from the spaces in between the folds came rushing the pride I had wearing white, being doctor, knowing, healing. I buried it under the pile and tried to forget. 

There were many university shirts I bought with my allowance but never used, and many gifts I used once for courtesy’s sake.  What struck me was the small percentage of clothes I had bought myself. Most of these were from bargain sales, flea markets, and the old faithful ukay-ukay at Baguio City.  They all got worn easily, and after a few uses I would put them away but couldn’t throw them out, maybe believing they’d redeem themselves sooner or later.

There was the red Marlboro Tour ’91 shirt I got from Dante, the bicycle mechanic at Corsa, the bicycle shop beside our store in Magallanes where I worked summers during my high school years. I must have been so foolish to dream of ever being able to compete with my self-assembled racer, but from there I learned the intricacies of nuts and bolts, tools and grease and cuts from brake cables breaking and digging into my prepubescent ankles. 

Sarongs and tubaos from Davao, museum shirts from my father’s trips to NY, floral handkerchief gifts from people who never really knew me, they were all there, as if to remind me of my inability to part with memories, no matter how inconvenient it got. They say I got it from Pipop, my grandfather Ponciano. We both had a lot of junk, but mine I took from place to place wherever I went, believing these were the only roots I had.

I folded all of them neatly and packed them tightly in boxes, preparing them to be finally separated from my sentimentality. They will end up in the garbage, or fortunate hands who need them more, or maybe even in another box under another bed for years and years to come. But none of them will come with me, as I deal with the eventuality of  my new life in the big city. 

The only thing I will take with me is my favorite scrub shirt. From there I am going to start my life with my old dreams, and a new love. Oh, I found that dress I wore back in ’98 when we first met. I stood in front of the mirror and placed it across my chest, running my palms across it, wondering how it must have felt for you to touch me. 

And then I started to sneeze. :o)
 

140902
Just up: Capture
Check it out. Check it all out. Check check check!
I should sleep. :o)

130902
Subject: My name is Bendrix.

I'm jealous. In a "The End of the Affair" kind of way.

I'm jealous of everything that surrounds you. I'm jealous of your clothes as they get to rub against your skin the entire day.  I'm jealous of your fork as it gets to be in your mouth. I'm jealous of your bed, your pillows, and all the people around you. I'm jealous of your soap, your lactacyd, and even your own hands as they get to wash what I cannot even smell.  I'm jealous of your beer bottle, the water down your throat, the words that come out of your mouth. I'm jealous of whoever's eyes you're looking at when you speak.

The beginnings of overpossessiveness? I think not.  I'm jealous of all these things: objects, words, beings; because they can get close to you and I can't -- when I'm the only one who can get the closest, make you the happiest, make you ache cry bleed laugh smile hurt wither live die move be still be mine be here be near.

:::::::eyes welling up:::::::

Maurice Bendrix (Ralph Feinnes) was typing on an old pica machine in the beginning of that movie. "This is a story of hate," he wrote.

Mine is a story of wanting. And pain.

120902
My classes start today. Three subjects: Managing IT (kewl!), Futures and Options (duh!), and International Finance (wish me luck!).  Surprised myself by getting the highest grade in Corporate Finance (dreaded subject) last semester. Must have been my outfit in the Final Exam. I should start believing in myself more. 
 

100902-110902
Bittersweet. But the phone calls help. A part of me feels like you are just next door. We speak and it's all familiar, how we crack each other up and melt each other's seemingly invincible facades.

In the meantime I'm working on ways to be near you. Things are looking up. I'm optimistic. I call and fate listens. Just you wait.

090902
Ladies and Gentlemen: ELVIS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING.

At first it felt like losing blood supply to an arm, feeling pain, then numbness, then absence. You never really lose an arm, you walk through your days thinking you still have it, only to realize time and again that it's gone.

My best surgery was a femoral amputation on a beagle suffering from perineal nerve paralysis. We cut the leg at the root of its femur but he wouldn't get the message that his leg was gone. He'd attempt to pee, raising his missing leg up only to fall on his butt. This is how I feel. 

I come home to you, to an image of a house with the lights on, only to be greeted by darkness and silence. You were just here, and I was just happy. Now we are severed by oceans and inside me an anger is building, i'm seething at how pathetic our states have become. 

you and i should be together, period, no erase.

150802-080902
25 Days. Can you say absofuckinglutelyamazing? 

Over Under And Through

The unraveling end
of the sisal*
is where the secrets begin.

We were taught to splice them
with tin sheets or
better yet,
weave them back 
into the fold.

Rope holds better
in knots than in pieces.

Yet we tie and cut,
burning tips we hope
we can fuse
or at least use
in the future.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
*sisal- n. fiber of the agave. (sisal, Yucatan)