blind mice

How can an adult ever prove he once possessed innocence? By memory? By experience? But memory, as a resource for proof, has never been a verity. And experience has never allowed itself to be duplicated. Innocence is not merely the purity of mind. Innocence is freedom, a liberty lost to time, a truth grown men and women of this world will never fully realize again once age has set in, and doubts have clung to their hearts. The most cynical of men are bound to lose it forever. Their hands will reach out to thin air but will never grasp the scale of a forgotten freedom.

That to me is the curse of growing up. Once we set foot in the world of the adult, we can only be child-like, or childish, but never innocent. What are we guilty of? – the messiness of our interior lives is the sole, inevitable crime. Our existence is so daunting even to ourselves, and its unique mortality is a pain to confront. Our interior lives seem so rattled by time. Our internal devices, so faint in the massive space we move across, are plagued by mechanical faults. We look back, we look forward, we look out, we look in – but we never see. None of the emptiness which cripples us is ever explained. We wade through the flood waters in a blackout: only feeling our way across the murky depths, relying on our gods, our beliefs for safety – that the world outside will be kind enough to share its sympathies, that the world beyond will exist on our word.

Seven billion blind mice.

We are born innocent rodents until we discover the grit of the sewers, the stench of the canals, the poverty of our underground enclaves. We are born free but we unwittingly imprison ourselves.

Is there any escape?

Nothing in this world can ever guarantee relief from such sorrow – not writing, not music, not art, not love, not medicine. Only death can.

Source: pinksubmergence

dead bodies in television

Feel free not to give man his riches. Feel free not to give man his wishes. Feel free not to deliver man from dangers. But give him his death! Give man his death as his own, for death is a private matter. Exploit man’s life but not his passing; how cruel for men and women alive to show the bodies of men and women dead in graphic streams, stiffened by a heart which stopped, covered in the wreckage of death’s causes: violence, calamity, stupidity, irony, yes, tragedy! How cruel for us to not even given the courtesy and decency a dead man deserves! What purpose does it serve to show to the world what man, nature, and animals can do to kill us? What use in weeping in fear when we all share the same fate?

seventh decade

I don’t see myself living past seventy. God be merciful and I do not find myself in any tragic accident, I can only see myself living at the most, a full life by seventy-five. Part of it is because I understand my body is simply not up to the task. My heart is physically weak. I have given little consolation to my lungs with my occasional smoking. My flesh is almost always tied in with exhaustion or a knot of nausea in my head and stomach. I’m not sickly. But when I do find myself temporarily incapacitated by a cold, or a bad case of flu, I find myself too dependent on medicine, pain-killers in particular. And whether by chance or choice - is there anything in this world that still happens by chance? - I am developing a habit for the bottle.

The other part is because I know I will live on my own. A solitary life is an endeavor suited for those with short lives. I do not mean living in isolation, with no contact with family or friends. I mean it the most pragmatic way. I know I will live on my own. It’s an inevitability useless to argue with (and that is why it is an inevitability in the first place). Bound to happen I suppose, but presumably with some form of grace or refinement. To be on my own suits me best. There could be periodic affairs, but at my age - at such a young age, you will cry out - forever is an overbearing commitment I have no intention of sharing with anyone. Bit by bit, like the ashes from my favorite Marlboro black. Sip by sip, like my favorite cheap bottle of brandy from the convenience store. That is how I would die - in increments. Gradually, but equally spread out in years until the seventh decade.

Source: pinksubmergence

one day

One day I will pass on. My body will expire. I will breathe my last. I will leave this worldly body, and leave my body of words. My bones will be crushed. My insides will be removed. My chest will be stuffed. My eyes will be closed. My organs will be taken away, given new functions as someone else’s. I may be buried or burned. Either way I will turn into a miniscule nothingness. But a pile of ash in a marble urn. But rich soil nourishing irresponsible grass.

But my little words, my private life shared online, my passionate evening trysts with poetry, and my exhausting afternoons with prose, would hopefully stay. They say what you put online is never easy to erase. They say that the online medium is a double-edged sword. It makes easy the need to trace your past or recall an event. It also makes easy regretting: the unforeseen typographical errors, the drunk photographs, the intimate aspect of your life laid out for everyone to see, the unwanted details so bluntly preserved.

However, I have full confidence in this online world’s resistance to be easily vanquished. That even though I will die, I will continue to live, I will continue an online presence, relying only on the stability of a technology which has in itself broken geographic boundaries, and collapsed time zones. It comforts me that my words will potentially outlive me, and those who knew and never knew me, those who had no idea of my online journal, will find this space and discover who I really was. It warms my heart knowing in some small way I was able to make something out of my silly passions: inspire, move, comfort, thrill, annoy or even make someone laugh. Even if it meant only a single man. Even if it mean only a stranger or passerby.

pink nails and a shovel

2:25 am. I always wake up at such an ungodly time. My arms, hands, and fingers scramble for the bedside table, touching anything and trying to feel the switch.

2:26 am. The lamp’s light sears my eyes. I cover them with a pillow. I adjust the pillow only when I am sure my eyes can take the brightness. I take the glass of water sitting beside the lamp, sip, then drink half of the contents. My throat is dry but my eyes aren’t.

Yesterday, at 2:17 am, I was still wide awake as you slept steadfastly. I stroked your chest, and dribbled my fingers on your clavicle. I touched your neck, and smelled it. There was the faint scent of shaving cream and cologne. Already, there was a roughness to your jaw. The hair had already started growing back.

I looked at your chest, the light wave of hair which crawled from your pubic area and spread out across your thorax. They were softly nestled on your fragile, semi-freckled skin; your round, crimson nipples flat in the ungodly hour. I tend to touch them with ease, nibble them when erect, sometimes pinch and even flick my fingers on these two dark circles which adorned your broad chest. But alas, you were asleep. So I settled for fine tracing.

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the wake

The wake was how it should be - hushed, solemn, somber. The mood was tangible but it did not prevent me from conversing, and laughing with classmates and friends, who also came to show their love and support to my best friend and his family. We all tried to listen well to my best friend’s stories and fond memories of his father, while we kept our own stories light, and sometimes even strayed away from discussions of loss towards more pragmatic situations - how we have been since high school, our works, and yes, setbacks

I would not go out on a limb and say I’ve been tremendously affected by his father’s death. But the experience comes close enough to revive my fear of it, that it’s been the subject of what I write the past days. I know this period is particularly hard for anyone who has to deal with loss. The first few days are often surreal. When I lost my grandmother, I cried buckets on the first day. In the succeeding days however, the more practical matters pushed the reality deep inside the head, existing but not forgotten: funeral arrangements, financial plans, welcoming relatives and friends to the wake, entertaining conversations full of heartfelt sympathies. You don’t really have much time to grieve during the first week because you’re too busy having to be strong for everyone, too busy thinking rather than feeling. Yes, you cry as you recollect memories with friends and family, but it’s only after the funeral, when the visitors decrease and are soon gone, and it’s just you and your family, that the pain sets in. When the chaos of the wake and funeral is over, the loss seeps into the silence and reverberates in deafening decibels.

Loss is such a big concept. It’s something I have trouble dealing with, as we all do. But it’s also something that keeps me up on my toes, and guides me in my ways. I know sooner or later my parents will die, my friends will die, the rest of my family will expire. Heck, I might even go first, and the separation will be just as hard. But even if you do know, you never know enough. And even if you’re prepared, you’re never prepared enough. There is always the fear of what comes next, regardless of how deeply faithful you are to your beliefs regarding death or life after it. Often times, when I’m in a wake, there is always that brief moment where I succumb to an unmistakable sadness. Seeing the coffin, I ask why something so beautiful, so full of vigour once, so combative in existence, can be just a body, lying in a state of mercy from his religion, virtues, vices, and Gods. There is the hope of seeing them again but there’s also the battle of letting them go, as we wage our own wars and try to return to any form of normalcy after the loss.

Rest in peace, Tito

palm sunday

Standing in front of his father’s body, swaddled tightly in white blankets, I could not help but recall the bible’s story of Jesus’ birth. Against the pastel blue tiles of the morgue, and facing the strength of formalin, there was something oddly difficult to swallow between the two images: one, I was confronting in reality, the other, I remembered from last Christmas’ festivities.

I strained to remember the sequence of events. I was reading a book when I got a call from my best friend. His voice was calm, almost methodical, as if he was reciting by memory what had just happened. In the hospital, nurses and doctors were trying to revive his father, who had just suffered cardiac arrest. I tried to look for the right words that could somehow comfort my dearest friend, but I could only breathe in silence, as I listened to his repeated requests, to pray for his father. He said goodbye because he had to make some calls, and I asked him to message me back whenever possible regarding the condition of his father.

Revive. The word itself seemed daunting, as is the task itself. God-like, I thought to myself. Only a miracle, I muttered quietly.

I closed my book. I could not be bothered to read anymore. I was restless. Thirty-minutes later, the call I anticipated.

“Wala na si Daddy”.

His father had passed away. My best friend’s voice, which had always been a source of calm, and which had always sounded reasonable in all occasions, now broke in parts, the grief still unimaginable, and hardly in its full force when it shone emotionally between cellphone static and cried gasps.

My good Tito was gone. The funny Tito. The smart Tito. The one who loved jokes, and who had always been most welcoming when I dropped by my best friend’s house. The one, aside from my father, who called me by my full first name. I hadn’t seen him in a while, but I’ve always been updated with his health condition whenever my best friend and I saw each other, or when he called me in the evenings, as he usually does especially the past few months. It was surreal.

All I could say to my best friend was to be strong. But beside that, and the occasional gasp of oh my god, there was only the most immense of silences. This was painful for me, and I didn’t even bother wonder how it would be for my best friend.

The next thing I knew my mother and I rushed to the hospital, where I saw my best friend, his mother, brothers, cousins and aunts, as they made arrangements for the wake, and signed hospital papers and death certificates. My best friend was making calls but during the brief moment he was free, my mother embraced him, and in my mother’s bosom, he finally cried.

We left twenty minutes later, also, in silence.

I woke up several times last night, my phone ringing with every call and message I got from my best friend: details of the wake, bank accounts where financial assistance could be deposited, tentative dates for the funeral, and how I was to inform our classmates. After his last call, at around four in the morning, I could no longer go back to sleep.

I have had moments like this, where the lamp is on and I am a awake in the middle of the night. But last night was eerie, and so quiet that for the first time in a long while, I could finally hear my clock ticking. My head was preoccupied with thoughts and nothingness, thoughts and even more nothingness. In high school, we were once asked by our Christian Living teacher what was our greatest fear. Most of us, adolescents at the time, and living with healthy parents, answered losing our parents. Years later, I could not imagine that our worst fears were to be realized in a way that was so close to home. We were growing old, and losing time with our folks. It was a countdown which started as soon as we were born.

Drenched in the white light of the lamp, with thoughts receding and flowing like the waves, there was a powerful torment of emotions that left me, interestingly, without it. A few moments later, there was fear, a fear of death, not for its pain, but for the unknown which was ahead to anyone who left this world. This fear is in all of us, one we keep in check when we keep our own health in check. But every now and then, the worst storms come, and blow away our defense, our illusions of life, and reveal to us the brevity of it all. And though mortality has made it difficult to live, it has also made the world so beautiful, and so difficult to leave.

And then I remember Jesus, the way our teachers taught it, the way our priests preached about his works. There was something elegiac about his story, how a God could persist humiliation, and suffer our own fate, when he had been welcomed by throngs with palms, loved for his miracles, followed by thousands. You don’t have to believe in Jesus, or take his story as fact. But there was something poetic about his ways, something beyond the literal level for his unwavering courage and confidence in the idea mankind could be better, something we always miss after having education and experience. Maybe, even after all the things we have had to go through in this world, we don’t really know anything about life or death.

And maybe Jesus was right, and was so kind to have asked God to forgive us, ask his father to show his mercy towards us, for we do not know what we are doing.

I read somewhere about the 3 easiest ways to die.

1. Puff cigarette daily
2. Drink alcohol daily.
3. Love someone who doesn’t love you back.

If by all means and methods the aforementioned requirements for an early death are based on science and unmatched cumulative years of focus and research, then I sincerely believe I would not go past forty.

Tragic.