Wrapped up, packed up, ribbon with a bow on it.

Currently listening to: Ribbon
Currently feeling: mixed

It was strange to have thought of you late at night, lying on my bed, when I'm supposed to be counting sheeps.  You were a stray thought.  From out of nowhere I was suddenly thinking of you.

Of what had happened.  Like creating a linear thread of disjointed events.  A melody hummed from the beginning to the fade out.

Of what had gone wrong.  Time.  There was never enough of it and it seems there was never a right one.  Effort.  The meeting point, the halfway place that was never defined.  Priorities.  Everything seems to have come first and this was merely an option.

Of what had gone right.

Of what could have been.  It'd have been good, probably great.

It was strange to have thought of you last Sunday night.  Strange, because it's been quite a long time already.  There are hardly any traces of you in my life.  You were a once upon a time without the fairy tale ending.  An open-ended question that seemed rhetorical.  A story that ended without a resolution.  An ellipsis rather than a period.

You were the thought that strayed in my mind when I'm not supposed to be looking elsewhere.  The sliding door from something that feels old to a new adventure.  From a dead-end to a dirt road barely seen.

What would it be like to be on that dirt road with you?

My cellphone rang, I looked at the time before picking it up: 2:46AM.  I heard my Mom's voice on the other end.  Don't shave your head from now on, she said. 

Okay, I'm going to sleep now, I said.  I got back to counting sheeps.  And my thoughts, for days, have strayed ever since.

Maybe tomorrow I'll feel better.  Hearing and seeing pictures of a friend's house ravaged by last Saturday's flood; learning that another buddy died from complications of a sickness--could these things be the consequences of last week's happiness?

I've always tried to caution myself from being too happy because I know, based from past experiences, that there has always been a corresponding pain or sadness that comes after being too happy.  Looking around, scanning the area from where I stand, seeing and hearing about lives lost and the damages done, this has been no exception.

I went with some friends to the wake earlier tonight, offered a prayer then sat silently in the pew.  I left after a few minutes, leaving the ones I came with behind.  I passed by familiar streets and avenues, where once I had a dead one to grieve on my own.  Death has always been on my mind, having seen it and come close to it a few years back.  It can happen fast and swift: everything alright then suddenly being rushed in the ICU, slipping into a coma, then dead.  I thought about life, about people struggling to survive, to live.  Fighting heavy rains and rushing waters.  I thought about a relative, fighting cancer in its last stages, diagnosed too late.  Of how it's being kept from his children who are thousands of miles away.  Of my friend who had seemed so healthy.  Of people in nearby villages and towns looking lost for the loved ones they've lost.  Death is on a harvest this season.

Maybe, too many good people deserve to be in a better place than this one.  As a character from a graphic novel I had read recently said: Why would we want to drag [them] back into this world of woes and heartbreak?  One thing I've learned recently is that there are, in fact, other lives possible after this one.  Places of reward and rest.  Don't you think [they've] earned a better life somewhere?

Amen.

Currently feeling: contemplative

Sitting in a comedy bar last Friday night after all the laughs were spent, with the stand-up comedian finally sitting down to sing, I thought about how this moment may never happen again.  It felt like a different life.  Like living in a precocious bubble, sheltered from the real world.  It made me feel scared and strange that all too soon this bubble might burst.

I stepped out of the comedy bar after the last set was done.  It was 2am and it had been raining the whole night already.  There were several cabs lined up outside so I took one and headed home.  Another week was ending.  It was a week different from the ones I've had in months.  For one, there was no work to contend with.  I ditched the Internet for a few days, mildly surprised that I can live without it.  I hardly had my cellphone with me; I wasn't expecting any urgent call or text from anyone.  If I were in school, it'd have been like a sembreak.  A relatively short one.  I didn't have to go anywhere.  I just have to be here.

As the cab cautiously made its way to my place, I thought about how too swiftly the week has come to a close.  That's the great insight from Einstein's relativity.  How time moves differently for all of us.  How an hour to someone stuck in traffic can feel like an eternity; while a day to someone having a good time can feel like a blink-of-an-eye moment.  All too soon and it's gone.  There was hardly anything tangible to hold on to this.

Looking back, it seemed all too fluid.  Days going by smoothly, flowing from one moment to another.  There was nothing spectacular or exciting.  Just the motions of everyday.  Waking up early, making breakfast, lunch, dinner.  Going around the city, trying out new things as if for the first time, rediscovering Manila.  All boring stuff.  But to borrow a line from the movie Up: the boring stuff is the stuff I remember the most.

This was a glimpse through the looking glass.  What it'd be like when things have settled down.  When the noise, the jungle, and the wilderness are all behind and there's just the plain landscape ahead.  Excitement and surprises are muted.  And there's just stability. 

Last Thursday night, over dinner, I laid out my options.  Immediate plans and diverging roads.  This is why this will standout.  Because this too shall pass.  Like all things fluid, it will go and flow.  The stream forking into rivers and oceans.  It was poignant to think about last Thursday.  These are my options, I said, like a house of cards flat on the table.  Plans with friends and my parents' plans for me. 

So I have to take a leave on June.

You don't have to, I said.

Of course I would want to join you and your friends.

That's nice.

How about this?  What's the timeframe?

Probably next year, I replied.

I can get myself assigned there in two years.  I'll get there.  Anyway, it's always been my dream to be there.

Plans, all plans.  It will change and it will accomodate change.  I wonder just how much change I can accomodate and for how long before things break apart and move in different directions.  From the very beginning, this has always been a fragile link.  How much more stress can it take before it fizzles out, I don't know.  It's easier to just keep on moving forward, dealing with the challenges of the present and holding on to whatever memory that can strengthen the ties.  Like a survivor on the aftermath of a deluge, surveying the landscape of all that's ruined and left, picking out what can still be used and taking stock of what has been lost, I need to cherish whatever memory I can make today before the good is gone. 

This much I know about myself.  I’ll never be able to get around the kitchen without a recipe book.  The most that I can cook is rice and anything fried.  Even frying something gives the possibility of getting it burnt (well done, to be nice about it.)  I’ll never have the aesthetic and the capability to keep a house looking clean, interior-designed and decorated.  On that note, I know I can never maintain a house clean for more than a week.  Things will be messy before the week ends.  I’ll never be able to iron clothes properly. They always come out like they’ve never been ironed at all.  I’ll never be able to do my own laundry.  I’ve tried before but it’s exhausting and back-breaking.  I’d rather wash the dishes.  It’s probably the only thing I can do around the house.  Aside from fixing defective light bulbs or leaky faucets.  I have two left feet when it comes to household chores.  I’ll never have the patience to shop for clothes.  It will always irritate me.  And I’ll never care much about clothes and style.  I’ll always be a decade behind when it comes to dressing up.  When everyone’s wearing the latest 2009 fall collection, I’m still in year 1999.  I have a lot of black clothes because it saves me from thinking what to wear.  I usually have my head shaved because I hate fixing myself.  I’ll never be fashionable, always wearing all the wrong things. 

But if you want to shop for clothes, I can patiently wait for you while you try out everything.  I wouldn’t mind.  I wouldn’t even mind paying for them.  I also wouldn’t mind if you prefer staying at home while I work for a living.  I prefer that.  I can take care of you when you’re sick, giving you medicines every four hours or so without fail, checking your temperature round the clock until you get better.  I will always let you sleep first because I want to know you’re sleeping soundly and comfortably already.  I will always check that the doors are lock, the ref is closed properly, nothing is leaking, and you’re breathing properly before I turn out the lights and sleep.  If you make the slightest of sound while you’re asleep, I’ll be up and awake to check on you.  I’ll feel better when I’m walking on the outer side of the street and you’re on the inner side.  I can take you or pick you up wherever you are.  I can be with you wherever you need be.  I’m more comfortable in the driver’s seat than in the passenger’s seat.  And when you feel harmed or compromised, I’ll be there sleep or no sleep.  Wait for you for hours to finish whatever it is you’re doing.  I’ll always arrive earlier than you because I like taking care of things.  I’ll never be able to run a household.  I know that much about myself.  But I can keep you safe.

This would be my nth attempt to write anything coherent here.  The most that I came up with in the past few weeks were snippets from random conversations.  Things that don’t make sense except to the people I’ve had those conversations with.

Recent events have left me wondering, unable to make my thoughts into anything sensible.  A series of entanglement that, so far, has managed to take care by itself.  As I’ve told BIG friends, who knows maybe by the first week of October everything would have fallen apart already.  Although Tall friend has a point: maybe it’s one way of knowing who’ll be left standing when things collide and fall apart.

This is why Option A sounds so deceptively attractive.  Because it’s an escape route.  A Deux ex Machina sort of way out.  Some thing that was never part of the plot, some thing that came out of nowhere to tie things up.  A divine intervention to a mess up.  A deliverance from an old to a new life.

If only there’s a certainty that Option A will happen soon and fast enough.  For now, things are moving excruciatingly slow.  In the meantime, life as I know it goes on.

And it’s becoming a lot less palatable.  Work is starting to suffocate me.  Last Thursday, I raised my voice on two colleagues who are at least 10 years my senior.  I’m slow to anger, but I hate having to explain the same thing a hundred times.

Life outside work is, well, interestingly intricate.  When an officemate asked me why I would be on leave two Thursday ago, I said I wanted to go somewhere quiet.  It was a lie to keep the answer short and simple.  I wasn’t going somewhere quiet.  I was going back to Bicol.  With its own set of challenges and a life I could never make peace with. 

I did what I could in the days that I was there.  When I came back to Manila, I had to leave all those things behind and think about what’s waiting for me here.  BIG friends may have been giddy, but I was just feeling okay.  Maybe not okay, more like in a drug-hazed state.  Too numb to feel anything.  I didn’t know what to feel until it’s standing there in front of me. 

Time goes by and it can work its way into anything.

I have to push back, pause the life I had been living for the past year to accommodate something.  There are times it feels like an unnecessary interruption.  And it presents underlying complications.

Which road to go down to: the one that may go the distance but presents the greatest risk?  Or those with fewer risks but may never go the distance?

I may never need to make a choice after all.  If there’s one thing life is capable of, it’s managing itself.  Maybe with as little interference as possible, it’ll find a way to work things out.  By then, I wouldn’t have a choice but to have what’s left.  If there’s anything left at all.

This is the problem of letting life unfold by itself.  You are left to deal with whatever’s handed out to you.  For now, this is what works for me.  I couldn’t interfere with it, I couldn’t make up my mind on a lot of things.  I remember the last line from the movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona: Cristina continued searching, certain only of what she didn’t want.

That’s no longer enough for me.  There are things I know I don’t want.  But I don’t know exactly what I want.  It’s hard to stand by something that was simply handed out to you.  Something that was never your choice to begin with.  But you have to stand by it because it’s what’s there.  Because you never made a choice at all.

There’s a small difference between slowly discounting the things you don’t want until you’re left with only one thing and choosing the one you want.  The former says, you have to have this because you’ve run out of options.  While the latter says, there are options, but I want this.  The first one feels like you’re eating, but still dying.  Sated but empty.  Fulfilled but still longing.  Maybe if you know the kind of life worth living, you won’t be wishing for another kind.  And getting dragged in all the wrong things.

What's that song?

Hmm.  Free falling? Why, you like it?

It's nice.

#

That kind. The kind that can accept you for everything that you are.  Why can't I be like that?

Maybe there are things na deal breaker lang sayo.  Things that would make you walk away.

Alam mo ba, someone once said to me: Kung sabihin mo man na ganito or ganyan ka, hindi ako magagalit or maba-bother. Why?  Because that's part of the person I love.

Ano sagot mo?

Wala.

#

When you want it all, you lose it all

I don't know if I should pat you on the back or slap you silly.

Wala naman kaming napaguusapan e.

Eh anong feelings mo?

I don't know.

Wushu.

#

O, i-accept mo.

Daggumit! Kung ganyan ka-cute ang temptation ko, I will let myself be tempted.

#

You're the shy, but aggressive type.

Aggressive?  Hindi ata.

No, you are. When you want something, you find a way to get it.  Although subtly.  Parang fox.  Cunning.

#

Kumusta ka naman?

Eto, parang sad.

Bakit?

Ewan ko, feeling ko mag-isa lang ako.

Eh di ba mag-isa ka naman talaga.

Hehe. Onga. I mean, newly-single ulit.

Ah.  Hanap ka.

As if it's that easy.