of forgetting

a class montage of “If You Forget Me” by Pablo Neruda

so much to read and share about love; so little time.

ghost hunting in bed.

i downloaded a night vision camera in playful hopes that i could capture the ghosts of insomnia. now the books sitting perfectly still pick up a ghastly appearance and they call
out – read me or perish. tomorrow will be a long, long day.

My Room Celebrates New Year

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

- Hellen Keller

It’s the start of 2012 and I’m uninspired. Having dissolved into the calm, I walk and talk and satisfy my bodily needs without being able to pick up a book, write, or complete a paper. My room ages while I remain stuck in a metaphysical shell.  The books beg to be dusted, and my closet wants to get itself together – although patiently so, since they do not squeal enough to jerk me off from this somnambulistic state of being.

As much as I’d like to kick off a year with a gleeful blog post, I can’t help but remain uninteresting.  There is nothing special about the state that I am in.  The Shah of Blah (Rashid Kalifah of Salman Rushdie’s “Luka and the Fire of Life”) would call this the place of Stagnation.  With my bed and the Wifi as my beasts of the moment, I find myself hoodwinked second after second, which all I am left to do is concede, in an infinite loop, in an infinite loop, in an infinite loop of junky life oblivion.  Comfort can be so deceivingly strong-willed that it beats Spirit out of me.

All I ask is Fire. I feel like wet leaves doomed to rotting. I’d rather turn into mad ember and set my old self ablaze to get back up again. My primitive forefathers, I’ve always imagined, had subjected their Spirits to Aimlessness until they chanced upon friction, through which they replicated the heat of the earth, allowing energy to flow in a cycle of creations and re-creations. They ate better food, dealt with freezing weather, survived the wilds, and gathered around to tell stories. In a quite similar sense, I roam my little territory – the place of self; my self in place – to find the answer to my coldness. They say friction is just about anywhere.  Say a pre-college notebook of lazy scribbles– fossils from an age of fights and flights; a digitally stored photograph of younger self: angst-filled, dramatic, quasi in love; a book of discoveries by Lewis and Clark, the Pioneering Naturalists; my new Android phone, a wonder to my opposable thumbs; and many others.  Yet I remain unfazed. I must have developed indifference.  Maybe romance has escaped me since the day I met man and his hamartia; since nature rebelled at its peak; since the time I grew tired of people who claim depth to themselves – the Sages of Fluff. As I get older, my Zone closes in as a smaller, less-sociable circle, with a limited slot only for memories of my hometown (pre industrial harass) and childhood, a few best friends, my lover with whom I share a culture, and the dreams I have for the universe.

Tonight, while my room celebrates the New Year, I refuse to force myself into thinking. Since work resumes tomorrow, I will let friction come about un-coerced – raw, fresh, instinctual.  And why shouldn’t this be my new year’s resolution?  While I remain alive and capable of rapture, I should be able to ignite from within.  From now on, I will need people, but only the best of people.  I will need systems, but only the most sensible of systems.  I will earn, yes, but not equate earning to progress. I will stay young, but not stay young in dreams and experience. I will love, but not limit love to humanity.  I will read and learn and write and teach. I will stay myself, but be a better self.  I will immerse and expand my circle, to find my existence in a wider place.  I will heal and retrieve, react and respond, think and perceive, give and receive, flee and return . . . But before anything else, I shall break out from this metaphysical shell and respond to my room’s calling. Let love, books, teaching, research, poetry, art, and the whole realm of Magic gather into hot, dangerous coal.

By Tomorrow, I shall be on fire, and I shall never be dowsed.

A Question of B…

A Question of Being

I AM provoked by
a fire I started myself  –
a clump of enigmas.

Perhaps it’s life
that needs
re-learning

11.7.11 – Cebu

balak

DUAW

(samtang giduyugan ko ug white noise)

Kung naka-yarok kuno ka
ug sobra’s duha ka tasa’s kapi
sulod sa usa ka adlaw,
trayduron ka sa imong utok:
ang suga mosayaw,
ang silaw modala’g lamat,
aron ikaw – nga nipugos pag-tukaw
aron magsuwat, magbasa, magtabi –
dagiton sa kasubo nga lanog
og kalipay nga alingugngog.

Sa di mag-dugay,
lumsan ka sa hinyap nga lawom.

Ug bantayi, kung aduna’y
mohapyod sa imong tangkugo,
pugngi ang pag-lingi,
kay kung dili
mag yapayapa ka’s kakuyaw.

Kay sa anang higayona,
nag-lurat ang mga pilosopong
dugay mo nang gipakatulog
sa imong utok.
Kabliton ka
sa amahan sa amahan
sa imong amahan –
o bisan kinsang anhing
(ma-mestiso, ma-langyaw, ma-nitibo)—
aron dasigon ka sa paglantugi.

Matod sa akong higala nga utro sa’ng hingapi,
dili kuno nimo angay dili-an ang maong pagdapit,
kay mosamot ang kasikas sa imong kusina
og gani, basin damagon ka
hantod sa lungon:
pastilan kahadlok!

Kay gibangon mo na man gyud
ang mga karaan, abi-abiha
(tudlo-ig FB, kantahi’g rock n’ roll, basahi’g balak)
Apan, hinumdumi nga ilang pagbutho
dili lamang alang sa imong bahin:
pamasin nga aduna sila’y buot
tuki-on: kahiladman,
kasayuran, katim-awan.
Ug samtang mo lubaylubay na ang kape,
atangi ilang sugyot,
ug kupti ug hugot,
aron kini dili mataligam-an
sa imong pagkapaw
gikan sa nirvana.

in memory of a dream

I remember an afternoon back home,
when mama would send us to sleep
so that our awkward little limbs
may grow into pretty branches;
our hair into waves of silk;
our milk teeth into ivories
that shall launch ships
and disarray planets.

In such afternoons, we dream,
but instead, we stay awake
to tiptoe into exit – her snoring,
a comfort that our secret is safe
in the garden we grew
with care and incantations.

What joy it was, alas,
to find a tiny stalk
propped against dirt,
greener than crayon,
and refreshing than sleep, we thought.

By end of summer,
we shall have grown shrubs
to carpet earth,
and bury our secret letters forever.
And what else could we raise?
Trees? Forests? Nations?
For we have called forth earthworms,
we might as well congregate
birds whose wings
might lift us into flight,
so that in afternoons away from school,
we could glide over seas
and hover above formations
over and over in an infinite reverie,
kept alive by the smell of
earth – messy, itchy
against our stubborn hands.

We did not grow to be queens,
and the planets stay aligned.
Had we slept,
we could have been beauties -
straight and tall and perfect-skinned

Don’t worry, sister.
Asymmetry is us,
In a world of smoke dusts
We keep the piercing heat in memory,
the smell of flesh that mingled
with dirt, in the same hope
of burying secret letters,
and finding truth.

 

On Being Stagnant

This stage is called the divine clog. It’s the phase of slow pace, a familiar feeling that I abhor more than anything else but I end up romanticizing anyway. It’s like reading a lethargic book such as 100 Years of Solitude  – tasting every nuisance and making each discrepancy linger in the head, hence the illusion of movement.  The culprits are mostly matters of the emotion and intellect, I assume, and they are quite persistent in winning me over.  They are the spirits which have long fought for residency in my being. In fact, they have now invaded my bedroom and have extinguished its atmosphere for productivity. When I go there, I seem to think of nothing but what a hopeless comedy the world is, what a noisy band of trumpets some of my students are, and what a hollow feeling it is to not have him around. As a result, the dining table, now doubles as a work station after meals; but what’s supposedly my refuge is being slowly taken over by these grey sluggish matter – a pack of ghosts.  I think they’re starting to eat my brains out too; I’m just asking that they leave my heart in peace.

Cleaning Up (to my Arlo)

Something in this space is humming
an inedible sensation that grows
in every jolting of paper strip, lonesome button,
book, biscuit pack.
I would have wanted to keep this chaos,
but I battle with clutter as though it’s a static curse;
so the jumble that this is,
a supposed memory of your existential temperament,
will clear up one by one -
the books will belong to the shelf, the button to the shirt,
the trash to the trash.
By morning, I shall soak in the void.

This point of conceding is a take on solitude,
knowing well enough a paradox of time and movement
- that rapture is brief but forever.
They say cleaning up is ceremonial
of hard endings, blissful detours,
deaths, births, and realizations
At this moment it is a plain domestic compulsion,
to desire order after a beautiful storm –
you and me, simulating the life of a home.

You sail back to Iligan tonight,
but your palms tell the story
of distances and  junctions,
hence I command the intangibles of you
to take your usual dining spot, to drink your afternoon coffee,
to play your staple music, and to sit still and easy
as though waiting 
for the next shot 
of our favorite Tanduay mix

Here’s to hoping amidst the sour taste of loneliness.

For the Love of Literature

A flight dream

An electric stream

From limbs to head to the

Fiery sun of night

The dreamer barefoot

Between the stratosphere and the stars

The galaxy and the barren earth

She will witness something,

in this world beyond

physical time, beyond

tangible perfection, beyond

elation, ecstasy, and despair -

shouting idealisms, warring in words

new and light, primeval and grave

she will fly again,

and visit the world

in a dismantled dream.