Paper paper obsolete

1
Am I here to gripe about AISIS? About how I left a reading/inuman at Green Papaya to hole myself up in an internet shop until 2 in the freakin' morning just to fix my schedule? And how I couldn't sleep last night, so I finally collapsed on the bed (after many futile attempts to nudge my makeshift stuffed toy to awaken?) at 630 in the morning? And how, at 930, I had to wait for so long, grit my teeth at the incredibly slow-ass pace of the pages to load? And that I have no available Theo and Philo classes? And that I have to loadrev eventually because puro itlog sa free-for-all (the available slots, not the remaining teachers) and the ones that are available are in conflict with the classes I've already enlisted in, or are held Tuesdays and Thursdays -- no-go because I have, er, work to do? And how much I spent in total -- all the cigarettes, the iced teas, the internetting, the gahdamned coffee?! Am I here to gripe about AISIS, ladies and gentlemen? No, of course not. Wouldn't dream of it.

2
To quote the piggy from Sinfest, "I am made of looooove!"

3
Downloaded Caesar III during enlistment woes. Haha, wala nang tulugan 'to. Yeah, hello, Freshman Nights Geekdom, remember me?

4
Sasha needs to write (see Number 7). Which means she has to stop reading Virginia Henley and Jaid Black, titles like The Glass Stripper.

5
Pol Doble -- you made me smile a coupla entries back. You are special, you charming old goat. Here's a smiley stamp for your hand. :')

6
Currently taking a survey on whether or not I should cut my mermaid hair. (Yeah, same sentiment as last year, and the year before that.) I could get Audrey Hepburn's Roman Holiday hair, but kulot, buwahaha. [He said: if you cut your hair, I'll tie the curls together with a ribbon, and go to sleep stroking it, whispering, It's okay, it's okay.] So. Goodbye, mermaid hair, hello, Bob Dylan hair? Or stick with it until I look like Lady Godiva, sans nekkid horse-riding?

7
From "feeling a little good tonight," a poem by Charles Bukowski:

Thou shalt not fail as a writer
because the very act of writing is the best protection
from the madness of the
world.

Watching an in-flight movie

I am so exhausted, any minute now I'll be keeling over with foam bubbling out of my mouth. My big toes hurt -- it wasn't a good idea to wear 3-inch wedges for a 3-hour commute, no matter how many times you tell yourself that this would be more convenient than bringing another bag for your shoes. People look at you when you tower over everyone else in the train cars, and too bad for you, you look like hell. You smell like a public payphone. You need a bath, you need to go soak those toes. What are you wearing tonight? How many times do I have to tell you that not everything in embarrass is doubled? I need teachers for this semester. Do I just pick afternoon classes, or do I conscientiously research the profs? Exie Abola's my thesis class teacher, and I just missed Martin. Hala, Martin, WTF? Hahaha. Haa. I'm going to have to call you Professor now, am I? Hassle. By the way, my toes hurt so goddamned much. What am I going to wear? My eyebrows look like happy squirrels cavorting on my face. I need teachers for this semester -- why are there eight freaking subjects listed to my name? There is so much to do, and I have to be somewhere else in thirty minutes -- happy birthday, ZoeDee. But I need another bath. I need to put a flamethrower to these eyebrows, and have I shaved my legs yet? Oh. Fine, I'll wear pants. They go well with my hobo-in-wedges look. Add an expensive stick of cancer. Rommel Adducul has nasopharyngeal cancer -- and I managed to spell that correctly on the first go. Smoking while trying not to be seen/smelled only aggravates the wonky heart conditions. You're pathetically quiet, and you sharpen your cha-cha moves with the wind and the smoke. This morning, my youngest brother and I giggled over the nilagang baka, his hairstyle, and having to turn the TV off for a snoring father. And a big congratulations to newly-sixteen Gabriel Joshua who's officially in college. Scared, I asked. No, he said. Ah, I replied, I was fucking terrified. Scheds, I have to fix my scheds. God, my fucking toes. God damn it, licorice-flavored toothpaste does not taste good.

Things happened while I was gone.

*

From Margaret Atwood's The Blind Assassin:

"Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, likes dogs peeing on fire hydrants. We put on display our framed photographs, our parchment diplomas, our silver-plated cups; we monogram our linen, we carve our names on trees, we scrawl them on washroom walls. It's all the same impulse. What do we hope from it? Applause, envy, respect? Or simply attention, of any kind we can get?

At the very least we want a witness. We can't stand the idea of our own voices silent finally, like a radio running down."

When the Spanish babies cry

I woke up at 8:30 this morning, and the house was quiet, and I played five games of Solitaire. I looked for my journal, scribbled down a dream I was, at that very moment, forgetting, and marked a date a week from the end of the month with sparkly hearts and jumping stars and what seems to be the disembodied head of a baby panda. I read a poem by John Brehm, titled “The Poems I Have Not Written,” and thought about the stories that were waiting for me in that land of unclaimed stories, where a lizard scuttling on the wall across your bedroom door might mean that in three fast blinks of your left eye, the wind will part, rivulets of air and dust conspiring with you to hasten the steps of the person – other side of the world? a city away? down the road? – you are meant to be with. I thought about a friend in Paris, in a room brimming with Van Goghs, Vermeers, and Klimts, thought about the men that must have slept with her name on their lips, after an hour of conversation and baguettes and cheese. I thought about the young boys two blocks over who ride their bikes at midnight to meet the yayas of the children. I thought about how it would be hot soon. I thought about tonight, about how I’d spend the evening drinking with my mother and an aunt, in some not-so-polite pre-Mother’s Day celebrations. I thought about tomorrow morning, about whether I’ll be awake when the cake that greets the four mothers in this house would arrive. I thought about a day I would not have to wait for for too long, and thought about the dress I may or may not wear with shoes, or maybe slippers? I thought about the ceiling I’ve missed waking up to, the sunlight that streamed through the gray glass of picture windows. I thought about the song that would play in the background as I’d ride trains and field the screams of grinning children I do not know, about the silence of the dead tomatoes when a door finally opens and I finally get a hug from someone who’s not half the length of my body.

At 8:32, the babies from the room above mine cried their way into the morning, and I turned on the bed, and went back to sleep.

To hating tension, no pension

Okay, just got home from a cross-metropolis trip (with "Total Eclipse of the Heart" on the radio as I rode on a bus, the wind sending my hair every which way, mostly sa mukha ng katabi kong mama), so bear with me. Anyhoo, here's today's edition of brainfart, from yours truly:

1 - Here's to Pancho, who celebrated his fourth year of painting full-time last Monday, to the tune of Frank Sinatra sa Que Rico. Yeahboi, here's to you, here's to art, to Dreamcatcher #42, to killing Venus, to paper-taping, to painting by numbers, to the artist's manual, to bling-bling, to earth tones, '"to days of inspiration, playing hooky, making something out of nothing, the need to express, to communicate, to going against the grain, going insane, going maaad!" Ahem. (Sorry, Rent soundtrack on loop.) Anyhoo, La Vie Boheme and all that jazz. Good job, bub. Beep, beep. :')

2 - Here's to Robert Downey Jr. and his tight butt. Wee, what a doozy. Yep, finally got to watch Iron Man, and that Tony Stark over there made away with my panties when they fell to the floor two minutes into the movie -- an inevitable reaction to Bobby Downey, who completely changed the course of my life when I was ten or so, when he sang Sting's "Every Breath You Take" sa Ally McBeal, as in, gahdamnit, rarrr.) So, while I fan myself: here's to older men, buwahahaha.

3 - It's nice to be back in the city. I am deliriously happy.

4 - "When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possible can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words, 'I have something to tell you,' a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in the thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children."
- from Joyas Voladoras by Brian Doyle.

Enjoy the rest of your summer, kids. :')

If you meet me halfway

I'm home -- the flattened-toad-splattered streets of Imus and all that. Home, depends on how you look at it. Definitions are vague if you're the prodigal daughter squatting in your family's living room. Good thing I had enough sense not to pack my mattress and a pillow or two in a big-enough box, that I let Moosebert hop into my purse-thing, that I've got clean linens in easy-access laundry bags, that I'm not at all iffy about being stepped on in my sleep. Yes, life is good. I sneak in a cigarette or two, smoking in front of my dad's chicken poop (I meant coop, but I'm keeping that). How's this for entertainment: watching widdle chicks poop and twitter, that's Telemachus, that's Darcy, that's Efren. I'm a feast for them damn mosquitoes -- new blood and all that. I feel caramel-coated most of the time. Whenever I move, I feel like dust particles and little bugs slapping into me, most of them on the way their Purpose in life (trademark owned by that un-balls-ified Rick Warren). Yeah, they're trapped, we're all trapped. Four showers a day don't do anything. Not even a stint in sudden rainfall -- ever notice how the torrents just stops, just like that, the moment you get the beginnings of a drenched shirt?

Two nights ago, I'd gotten lost with dear friends and darling children, and the windows of Pancho's car were rolled down, because the night felt nice, soothing in fact, and a little girl in the backseat kept looking at the lightning that trembled every moment or so, and she was asking, "Why, Tatay, Why?" A couple of hours after that, I ventured over to Que Ricos, which should've burned down in a freak accident some months ago, but I, ahem, er, uh, well, it never came around to happening. Fuck. Anyway, a drink or two, or four, and a Coke, a pack of cigarettes, some literary tempers. Delightful night. And then it was back home, and I was tired, coming down from a two-day adrenaline high, and I plopped onto bed, hitting my head on the corner of one cabinet door in the process, but it was worth it. Man, oh yeah, was it worth it. Panalo.

Hours after that, brother Gabriel Joshua (on a break from his DLSU basketball training whatever) and my mother helped me cart boxes and boxes galore from my fourth floor room, to the rented L300. Get evicted with dignity, check. Have one hell of a booze-fest before leaving for toady Cavite? Not exactly, especially hours following zombie-mode that automatically kicks in come the Palanca deadline (which got moved, yeahba). But it's cool. When something sweet wakes you up in the middle the night (well, at the crack of dawn) and simply takes your breath away (cliche, cliche!) that can sustain me. I didn't get my grand farewell -- I really can't help but think I'm permanently stuck here in Cavite, as all my worldly possessions have been dumped here -- but I really do think I got something, well nicer. Something quiet, words said simply, no thoughts of lyricism (no doubt due to the brain-leeching that accompanies deadlines like that), honest, so goddamned matter-of-fact that it gets me speechless whenever I think about it, as speechless as I'd been at the time (fucking schmaltzy cliche.)

Speaking of cliches (haha), Sir Sawi tells me the first of this year's Dumaguete fellows arrive tomorrow. Hello, hello. Learn, have fun, and all that jazz. Saya diyan, madrama. Beer. That's not a poem.

Toodles, kids. My dad just came in with some grilled tilapia (*insert Homer drool here*), and I've got to coat these legs with Off! lotion. Have fun, whatever part of the world (first, or third) you're in.

*

It's May, yes, and the rain this afternoon was probably a fluke or something -- weather gods playing poker or yosi break daw muna -- but this here is a whiff of that strange little wonder that is poetry: From "April Rain Song" by Langston Hughes -- "Let the rain kiss you. / Let the rain beat upon your head / with silver liquid drops. / Let the rain sing you a lullaby."