Claim me

It’s my first post being composed on my year and a half old smart phone. I’ve been trying to conquer the super sudoku app on this same phone, anything to keep my mind occupied.

I finally reactivated my fb accounts and found myself dreading the newsfeed only to realise that I don’t see updates if undesirable people aren’t my contacts. I’m always torn between this inordinate desireto see how you are and the deeper but more distant need to preserve my sanity from further threats.

I’m trying to make this quiet life normal again. You are everywhere! The only way I can avoid you is to stop watching you tube clips, suits (which I love), and not go to school. I still have three months to learn how not to seek pain, which is your face and demanding voice.

In the end, I think I wanted you to fight for me in spite of the irrational anger. I really just wanted you to realise that my one crazy series of losing my temper was nothing compared to
everything that had led me to that point. But like so many before us, before you, I scared you away.

Comforting familiarity, chilling reality

please keep the pain away

i cautiously returned to ehf-bhee today. it still — honestly, earnestly — hurts to remember why i deactivated my accounts in the first place. but i did it anyway because the questions from friends and family were a bit too uncomfortable to handle. “bakeeet? what’s the story behind that?” or “i don’t like you! you unfriended me!” no, no, i didn’t… i just withdrew into my shell.

and deep in this strange, cavernous heart of mine, i just wanted to curl up and weep.

(In photo: SR embraces the icon of the Humanities for comfort, solace, security)

how can you be mine and i yours if you are the very source of what maims me? 😥

allergic to ehf-bhee

i don’t know exactly how many days ago i swore off ehf-bhee. all i know is i am genuinely frightened to go to the home page. if i see the log-in page, it will freak me out mightily. i don’t want to go anywhere near that place. i have more than one account there, two with my real name, two with my alter ego identities of this is one. but i can’t go back there.

that world is fraught with too many pain-filled opportunities. it’s the innocuous like, the unmindful sarcasm in order to gain popularity, the wanting the image to be glorified, that the pettiness of human nature and wild, abandoned youth play themselves out and i am unable to screen out the sparks that turn into poisonous darts that do maim me permanently.

all i know is that i can’t go back there. you are all over that place and when i try to put my mark in cyberspace via that platform, i unwittingly hurt others.

last night, at coffee bean and tea leaf in eastwood mall, my BFF and i pseudo-inked the terms of my new life. ehf-bhee is one of the things that i have decided to give up forever if i am to protect my existence in at least two different planes. 

as i write this, my chest is so tight and the echoes of compliments as to how good i look now (i really do look good of late and i don’t know why except to convince myself that sadness becomes me) are the only things i can think of right now. that i miss _____ is a given. it will be so for a long time to come. and i have no intentions of overcoming it in any forced way. it will come to pass it is meant to do so. if not, then you are with me for a very very long time.

Katya Lucia, 1

Four days from now, Katya…

– would have been

– will be

– is turning

… one year old. 

Like her older brothers, she would be walking by her first birthday. Her musical genes cannot be denied and she rocks on her own, swaying from side and sings along with Kuya M and Diko K, especially when they were practising their carols before heading out to go from house to house in the neighbourhood. 

She has the most beautiful locks that curl at the nape of her neck and she is content to lick all the toys in the house. Her eyelashes are long and curly, just like her father’s. When I see her putting her soft, pink lips over the toy saxophone I bought for her when she was 6 months old, my heart swells.

She is fair-skinned like me but I know her hair will be thicker and stronger than mine. She will be stronger and bolder and she will know how to say No. She will conquer the world, my Katya.

I love you and miss you, Katya Lucia. Advanced Happy Birthday.

Love,

Mama SR

Ebe Dancel fix

First of all, before I go all gooey-mooey over Ebe Dancel and his music, let me just say that it sucks to be me right now. Since starting my new exercise regimen over a week ago, I got felled by the flu! Or maybe it was the friggin’ heat. Or the muggy air. Or Manila just being so damned polluted and hopeless and an urban jungle that I hate hate hate. All of the above. Or maybe because I’ve been making choices again of late that God would frown upon. Maybe I need a slap. A big one. Make that lots of big slaps.

Now to Ebe. I had my fix again earlier. Brought along my trusty horde of loving students who failed my 20-point quiz in the morning and who believed that attending my Bonus Opportunities might give them an A. I checked their quizzes before popping over to Route 196 for Ebe’s gig and let me tell you, many of them will NOT get that A. But it doesn’t hurt to try. In the end, the nerds will win and the students who flock to my Ebe Bonus events are not the nerds. They’re the fun ones. Too bad A and fun don’t mix in my syllabus. It is a real pity.

The BFF showed up. I don’t know why I feel so numb around him. I didn’t want to argue with him. I just wanted to tell him, “Shut up, fuck you for being such a prick, and I miss you. Don’t you ever leave me alone again.” I still believe that one of him is better than a mob of cute, muscled, possibly well-endowed boyfriends who are good in the hay for a couple of time, or days, or weeks, or maybe months, but will fade away sooner than you can say Yo.

Karma is a real bitch and it’s kicking me real hard right now. I think this is the part where I should end with an Ebe Dancel song just so I can justify the title of this bland entry. Don’t worry; the song will be related to all the unrelated ideas I’ve thrown in here.

Ikaw ang hulog ng langit
Sa puso kong napunit
Dahil sa dramang paulit ulit
Kanina ka pa ba nariyan?
Sino, nasaan, kailan ka pa?
Ikaw pala…

Just like that

I knew that one day, I would wake up and it would be gone. You would be nothing, nowhere, like fading slithering snakes of mist on the periphery.  The last chords of the songs I had compiled to enshrine your memory no longer play. The sight of you no longer has the power to pull me back into magical reverie. My mind has checked out and my heart doesn’t care about the change. Keep it all.

 

Sana…

… magsalita sa Tagalog o sa wikang pambansa ang lahat ng tao sa gobyerno (tulad ni P-Noy!), pati na rin ang mga tagapamalakad ng Bb. Pilipinas pageants at ang mga contestants. Naasiwa na talaga ako sa tunog ng wikang Ingles sa mga ganitong mga pangyayari. (Ano nga ba ang tamang salita para sa okasyon?)

… ma-karma na lahat ng mga gago sa mundo — ang mga drayber ng dyipni/taxi/bus/traysikol na nanggigitgit ng mga namimisikleta, halimbawa, o di kaya’y ang mga nagmamaneho ng SUV na sumusuway sa batas at nagmamay-hari sa daan.

… magkaroon ng sapat na dignidad ang mga taong mahirap. Kapag may respeto sa sarili, bumubunga din ang respeto para sa ibang tao at sa lungsod.

… matuto akong maging mahusay na ina, lalong lalo na sa aking panganay. Ayaw kong wasakin ang kanyang diwa sa masasakit kong pananalita. Nawa’y gabayan ako ng Panginoon at mga taong nagmamahal sa akin at minamahal ko sa buhay.

From 100 to 600

It’s not much of an improvement but for someone who has never been able to swim more than 100 metres before panting like a dying dog, to swim 600 metres of nearly-uninterrupted crawl was the breakthrough of the day. I resisted the urge to revert to the familiar, comfortable breast stroke that I can do for 2,000 metres while 8 months pregnant… I swam 600 metres in 20 minutes! I know this isn’t much but believe me, I am in swimmer’s heaven.

What did I do to go farther than I have ever gone? I just concentrated on exhaling through my nose underwater. When I felt myself beginning to gasp for air, I slowed down. When I felt my arms becoming sore from too much exertion, I willed my legs to kick more. The zen of swimming crawl — and only that stroke — is still in my future but it is definitely something worth working towards. I will get there!

Koy who is Ting Tong

i love the theme of this blog right now because it’s called Koi. it’s my own special name that means ‘pinky finger’ in thai. furthermore, i’m also Ting Tong, which in thai means somebody weird and crazy in a good way. at least that’s according to Y.  it’s a cute name to be called, he claims, and i’ll take his words at face value, because he thinks that i have value of the face sort.

i just watched the battle rounds of teams ceelo and adam in the second season of “the voice” and i must say, i’m a little bit worried for my boy, adam. i don’t know if america will buy into the kind of kitsch that ceelo green and christina aguilera subscribe to because adam’s team this season reveal his choices for a subdued, “voice” package of singers who may not necessarily be young (katrina and the black bosomy woman who sang adele’s “rolling in the deep” in the same way adele sang it at the grammy awards — adam, what were you thinking???), nor lookers (the mouseketeer luca looks plain), nor fashionable (even though i found christina’s comment about karla’s cowboy boots a tad catty, i must say i agreed with her… the glittery mini dress with the suede boots just didn’t do anything for me). those who did have looks, like mathai, soared, even if christina thought it was “a bit too loungy”. i can’t trust a silicone-has-been platinum blonde who constantly shoots off her mouth when a pretty young thing with an honest-to-goodness voice, hot body, and beautiful diaphanous dress brings the entire house to its feet.

blake and his crappy jacket were the singular islands of reprieve and sanity tonight. ceelo kept throwing in annoying production effects that christina lapped up but which distracted blake from enjoying the performances of team ceelo singers. it gave me a rush of mean vindication to see ceelo’s model erin get shot down by the judges and ceelo himself because she’s been sucking since the battle rounds. the brother duo she bumped out of the competition would have been more dope for me but then again, i’m a rocker at heart so i’m heavily biased. my sentimental favourite, pip (and not because he was drop-dead cute, which he is), was underwhelming. he did choose a rock song, like jamar from team ceelo, but unlike jamar, he was singing inside an undersized condom. i wanted so badly for him to get down and dirty, literally, and slide across the smooth NBC stage on his knees and tear a few threads from his cheesy jeans and chucks combination. i wanted him to rip off his uber-kitschy tie and run it all over his body in erotic, provocative ways. but he didn’t. which is why jamar brought the house down when he rocked hard in the last number of the night, earning standing ovations from both ceelo and adam levine.

enough of the voice. i am unabashedly a team adam fan but i don’t mind if someone from team ceelo takes the trophy this year. my money’s on jamar!

i can hear dido tonight.

“My lover’s gone
I know that kiss will be my last
no more his song
the tune upon his lips has passed

I sing alone
while I watch the ocean
My lover’s gone…”

is it possible to fill up the room with presence so that the only thing left to do to create space to breathe is to smile? a smile changes the dynamics that confined space immensely, and although the sexual tension subsides, the languid expression is the concrete validation of one’s sensuousness and palpability. yes, the heart is throbbing and i didn’t think it could happen so late in the day, but the body is yearning for more, clinging to the rough, misty edges of memory. two bodies are one, ragged breaths mingled, and ninja stars are puncturing the borders of one’s internal universe with every exquisite thrust of that physical union. as the weeks counter climbs, so does the inevitable, disastrous ascent to forgetfulness.

When will I see you again?

You are looking good of late, Doc Emer! I like 🙂