Wouldn't it be nice

Last night.

From Mercury Drug for my drugs.
Looking for a place to eat.

My mom comes over. Joel Toledo is spinning in Mag:net. Risking social status (what little of it I have) I tell her, "You want to eat at Mag:net?"

"Not really," she says. "Masisira yung floppy disk ko."

I roll my eyes.


*

Crossing the street.
Still looking.

Mom: Pinapawisan ka ba?

Sasha: Nope.

Mom: Ako pinapawisan!

Sasha: Wow.

Mom: . . . and I often get hot flashes lately!

Sasha: Ah.

Mom: *big grin* I'm getting menopause!

Sasha: You don't have to sound so proud and perky.


*


Rapzi Tapzi under the overpass.
Thinking of what to eat.

Mom: That embutido looks so sad.

Sasha: Wah?

Mom: It looks like a chopped up penis. A skinny one.

Sasha: Mom.

Mom: What? Look at the right end of it. That's a head!



*


Still at Rapzi Tapzi.
Updates.

My thirty-nine-year old mom's hair is in the Posh Spice haircut. My fifteen-year-old brother, Gabriel Joshua, got a Mohawk. And since my grandmother's staying with them, my dad can't beat some sense into his son, lest he face the wrath of my sweet little lola.

My twelve-year-old brother, John Vincent, has a suitor named Rosita.

"Joshua says that this Rosita is really pretty," Mom tells me.

"Uh, isn't he in fourth year?" I ask. "What's he doing looking at freshies for?"

The pretty Rosita is texting him messages like (my mom whips out phone to show me) : "I think you're cute and very funny. You make me laugh a lot. Cute talaga! I like you a lot, John."

I huff. "We girls never did that in my day!" I say, waving my fork about.

Boarded up the cinema

"Everyone dies," he says.

Despite my horrifically inflamed tonsils, I swallow the over-milked (excessively lactated?) Figaro coffee I bought as pressure / motivation / lifeblood while I do my Philo paper. And I blink at the man in front of me, twiddling with my blueberry muffin (no double meanings here), and looking toward the distance.

"Everyone dies," he repeats.

I bite my lip to stifle a gasp. And a torrent of coffee. Leaning forward so that our noses are almost touching, I say in a panic-stricken whisper:

"You're not talking about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows are you?"

June, July and August said

Never knew I could have such a deep connection with regurgitated oyster. Then again, it did not come to me, until the wee hours of last night, that my vomit could pour in such a dignified manner. This was a bucket of throw up that made you sit up in respect (or double over in disgust, whatever). It's consistency, the sheer viscosity in which it carried itself. That shaking of the Earth heralding its arrival. The clenching of abdominal muscles that never knew such clenching before (I don't work out, haha). And that sudden breaking of floodgates and the unencumbered whoosh! and whooooorgh! of slime and shredded oyster and bile. And, Christ, the smell.

I ran from Chickenboy, from Joel, Karl de Mesa, Mia and Joey to barf in the fall-out shelter-ness of Pancho's pad -- since it was waaay past curfew at the dorm by then. (At least it wasn't in his car.)

Thank you to Pancho's bucket. Oh, and Pancho too, my nursemaid. Har!

"Mali ba," Pancho asked me whilst my head was stuck in the bucket, "kung gusto ko pa ring balikan yung mga oyster sa Chickenboy?"

Hm. Quite possibly. Especially if bits of it are dangling off my spittle-stringed chin.

THE SIMPSONS MOVIE TOMORROW! D'OH!

Miss from Mundania

Sometimes, I find myself missing Mundania, with its unglimmering sky, colors that don't leap to rub against my fingertips, dayap that have no names, a solitary Moose, Veet applied in the privacy of the bathroom. Of waking up in the mornings and deciding to cut class, just because I don't want to go, not because I don't want to leave. Of hating school because it is quintessentially detestable, not because there's a need to balance the loving of other things. Of 4 AMs spent drooling in bed, instead of waiting, perched, on my fire exit, or trying to expand my face-making repertoire. Of just writing a story and not having every sentence glow on the surface of the page, in accompaniment to an aria of all its meanings and double-meanings and pseudo-meanings. Of not writing poems. Of not seeing a poem or two in a dinner conversation about a cat who stayed for only a year at someone's house, about the unsmiling man on TV who could crush uncooked potatoes with his bare hands, of the extended-adopted family in contrived poses atop a desktop computer. Of nothing.

I miss feeling blah. Not because I miss miss it, that I long for it -- it's just that every thing's been so blah-riffic before that I've gotten used to it. And now. Now.

Sometimes, I raise my head from whatever comfortable distraction I've immersed myself in, letting all the crazy juju whizz by around me, at times plucking bits and pieces of my expanding, no, expansive self and just freaking look. At everything. The colors. The feelings. The poems in the carpet. A person. The shadows of another. Sometimes, myself.

I'm not hoping for the blah-ness to return. I'm just happy that it's dragging itself by without me in tow.

I WANT TO HUG EVERYONE.

. . . someone shoot me, please.



PS
Let's see: a paper for Philo; group report and research paper for Theo; a long test for Histo, plus its random papers and TA arrgh-age; deluge of papers for Nonfic; a story, then two, then three more for Fiction. Plus all the random bullshit pervading my life.

Early hours of certain Monday nights, no-commitment Wednesdays and Thursdays-after-730 brighten me up every single time that breeze by.

Oh, and they set a midnight curfew sa dorm. Rawr.

Bumili kayo, puwede?

Too lazy to actually check and brainstorm and write a blurb-y thingumie, plus editress Sarj and BossPerson Martin haven't done their token blurb-y thingumie so I'll just post a pic of the cover of this month's issue of KATIPUNAN and say that I actually wrote something here, is about Dean Alfar on Speculative Fiction. Meowrr.

Sarj talks about children's lit, Nikita talks about black and white photographs, Khaye about sex, Isel about obelisks and Simon de Anda, Martin about widdle boys shitting by monuments and Boy Higad about something something not too snarky.

Oh, yeah, must contact Dean Alfar.

Pssst, it's only 40 bucks. Support free press. And pay for my baon next week!



PS
Thanks to MaMia for the contact info! Bumili ka ng 6 from me, ha?

Baby let's cruise

I am all out of wit. And my vagina just fell off. Ingat, baka maapakan niyo.

I need 2 short stories by Friday, 3 more by August, and 5 by the end of the semester. My insides are starting to shrivel, just thinking about it.

*

Sarj: "Maybe it's just me, but I don't think my heart is beating as much as it shoiuld."

Sasha: *blink blink* Me, I feel like my heart is beating too fast.

Sarj: *nods sagely* You're excitable.

In the aftermath

Some brainfarts:

1
I hope the weather would make up its mind already so I'd know what to wear.

2
Is it just me or does all this chilly wind inspire diarrhea to blossom within the dark depths of my, er, soul?

3
How come when I finally drag myself from bed, to trudge to school, it is to find out that my oh-so-benevolent professors have decided to grace us with free cuts?

4
It is illegal in the Ateneo to use a helicopter to go to school.

5
I have twenty bucks to my name. And only because I sodomized my poor piggy bank, Mr. Piggy Bank, so that he could cough up the coins.

6
I can feel the acid burning a hole through my stomach. Medyo sa kaliwa.

7
I think Optimus Prime is God Incarnate.

8
If there's a group of people in your society that goes by the name of Decepticons, and you still expect them to hold tea parties for you, then your species does deserve to be wiped off the face of this planet.

9
Kuwento niyo sa'kin yung mangyayari sa Harry Potter ha?

10
I am so out of touch with reality.

11
My article on Dean Alfar and Speculative Fiction is more than 6,000 characters over the limit. That means I'm in for a monster whipping from Sarj. Wee.

12
Who wants a superstorm? Come on, raise those hands, people, raise em up hiiiiigh!

13
Someone in cyberspace needs to sleep.

14
Mia Tijam, nasaan na yung pasalubong ko? :')

I won't wait forever

I want to be more eloquent, though at my current state that's already a tall order. I just want to make sense, I want to get back to making checklists on neon Post-it notes every three hours, I want to drown happily in schoolwork because I don't have any other sumathing to drown in.

But now I do. And glug glug glug.

Some strange answer

Last Happy Monday in Mag:net, Kristian A-be said, "I found a poem by this Valentine person."

"Oh yeah?" I asked through a mouthful of pan de sal.

"It's called Sasha and the Poet."

Needless to say, bits of bread shot out of my nose. Oh well. 'Twas for Art's sake.

*

SASHA AND THE POET

by Jean Valentine

Sasha: I dreamed you and he
Sat under a tree being interviewed
By some invisible personage. You were saying
'They sound strange because they were lonely,
The seventeenth century,
That's why the poets sound strange today:
In the hope of some strange answer.'
Then you sang, 'hey nonny, nonny, no' and cried,
And asked him to finish. 'Quoth the potato bug,'

He said, and stood up slowly.
'By Shakespeare.' And walked away.