Wishi-wish-wish

I hate taking medicines. I have that new age belief that medicines make us weak, vulnerable even, to more reasons to be weak and vulnerable. I know that’s not true is it not? but we all have to hold on to something we can believe in. I’m a firm believer of false truths. How sometimes, these false realities become true—The Secret, I would say—sometimes, just plain delusional.

Next week shall be the start of a new chapter in my life, a chapter that I can only hope to write well, eloquently, elegantly and strong. I have always wanted to be a writer. Not for the by line nor the fame, should there be any. Definitely not for the money because knowing me, though I know I have the bone and spine to find pure joy in the simplest things, am easily attracted to glitter and the sparkles of life. Luxury is my middle name; but like most of us, that middle name isn’t quite necessary.

So next week will begin a new chapter of my life where each day shall be a make or break point, in its most literal sense. My responsible DNA hopes to satisfy with excellence; while my playful bone can only pray for pleasantries along the way. I hope it wouldn’t be a tireless cycle. I hope for growth and a steadfast movement towards something better. It’s almost mid-year and I’m closer my “moving out” deadline. However, today, I shall be thankful for movement.

From point A to B.

From Y to everlasting changes.

To highways and pitchforks.

Credits.

Cue music.

Here comes that little teaser at the end of a movie. That elusive five second spiel you didn’t think existed, a gift for the patient ones.

I own a Toshiba something laptop that is brutally butchered into a seemingly functional piece of metal. This would probably sound pointless, or maybe even shallow, but I’m kinda looking forward to using a new computer for work. I think I will be issued a laptop, it wouldn’t be mine to own, but still mine to use and bring home and stuff, I assume. Now, knowing my paranoid mind, I’m sure commuting with a laptop that I might be held liable for should it be lost or worse, stolen, wouldn’t settle quite nicely; but I’m actually excited to have a new laptop.

Let me tell you a little something about my Toshiba. It’s so odd, because I didn’t name my laptop, or if I did, didn’t take its nickname seriously. I got this laptop three years ago when my tito asked me to return home and help with the family business. I paid for this laptop for six months and come to think of it, is the second most expensive thing I ever bought with my own money (the first being my 60k camera which until now, I have no idea how to use, really haha). I got a Toshiba because for gadgets, I always believe Japan knows best. I also got a Toshiba because I remember S owning a white Toshiba. According to her, a Mac was too expensive and complicated to maintain. Well, who am I kidding? I got a Toshiba solely because S owned a Toshiba. End of story.

To date, this laptop has been the dearest thing to me. I know that may have sounded geeky, but I have written so many things with this laptop. Music and relationships aside, this laptop is the reason for the many little successes I have earned the past few years. This is the room I never had, my room of requirement. Every scratch on my Toshiba looks beautiful to me. I even have scotch tape over it’s track pad (?) because it’s so overused, the protective covering against static, I assume, has been completely erased out. It has a crack, not just a dent, on its side, and its battery life is almost non existent, but my god, this Toshiba is more than a laptop. It’s a SEAL. It’s an overworked soldier, tortured with years of almost 24/7 typing, multiple-almost-illegally-multiple windows, and excessive careless downloads—all of which were done without an anti-virus! But hey, it’s still alive and kicking. I am a bit sad to part with it, but I know I must save up for a new laptop. Should I be given a new laptop to work with thanks to my new job, I will be grateful that my Toshiba, though unnamed, will be earning its well-deserved rest. It’s been three years, but with my abuse and misuse, that’s three dog years for this Toshiba wonder.

With that, I hope my office issued laptop will be a Toshiba. I honestly can’t see myself using a Samsung (that will die on me), and I doubt an Acer or an HP will survive me as well. I think I can only live with a Toshiba, Sony or a Lenovo… but then again, any would do.

Still, I hope!

Of course if I end up having my own PC at my station, please disregard all the talk and stop at cue music.

Ahh... these simple almost mundane wishes make me, me.

Reasons and Excuses

Between thought and action is reason. When we lose it, forget it, or worse completely neglect its value, we become animals imprisoned by our own self-serving missions rooted on an irrational culture set to stone by protruded impulse.

Few days ago I left my email open on Y's laptop. She accidentally opened it and saw an ex's name. This prompted her to read the exchange, or at least open what it started with. It was an email I sent with a poem in it. A poem I wrote in trance while my life is in transit, so to speak. The issue for Y was: why did I send the poem.

The answers to me were simple but the anger, frustration and distrust that clouded her mind were too thick, her grace was taken away. The little bit of it, if I may say.

I sent the poem because I wanted to send the message. Sometimes, when what you want to express is too personal, digging for words become tedious and even antiseptic. That's where resorting to pictures or symbols or prose or colors come in. I found my medium in poetry and decided to pounce on it. I wanted her to know, just know, or at least grant her a better chance of knowing what little I can deliver. I've been in the position of being left blind-sided and it was never fun and safe to sit with shadows. It shouldn't matter says Y. But I've no bad blood with A despite what happened so it mattered to me that I can do something like leave a trail to MY reason so she can someday, when she wants to, know the thought and understand the action. Y can't get that. She didn't have any reasons to be graceful.

So she did something, an uproar that I can't tolerate blindly, and that uprooted some of the things we nurtured the past few months. I felt/feel an anger and disgrace, shame and sheer disappointment over the person she decided to become. Denial, repulsion, hatred set in and I struggle to meet with acceptance and heart.

There is the monster that slept. There is her monster.

But the villain in me taps my shoulder, whispers understanding and empathy. And maybe there is reason why I'm willing to swallow. The action may not be thought through but the reason is shining over an airless box. For all its worth, Y exploded right before my eyes. Graceful or not, I'm at a point where I'd prefer that than someone who will speak of me heartlessly then pretend to be the soul to which my weakness can recline with.

So the poem was set free, free enough to be whatever it wishes to be. I'm happy with the butter that was churned, there could be better but that better world is no longer for the same spirit that ignited the first lines of my poem. The changes are still happening, forming worlds cornered by numbered streets, and these changes are mine, mine alone. Mine to decide with whom I would share it. Mine to build, hide, protect and cover with sealed lips, cryptic words and beating pauses. That although A didn't understand what I was saying, the message was sent. I blame my failed style in depicting my feelings with words, sure, but I also blame "the reason" why she was unable to capture the song between the lines. The reason is change. 

Change has taken over everything.

The Disappearing Eve

On a sheet of passing palpability, the disappearing eve woke up an eternal uprising that moves across blurred out spaces and stains dog-eared corners of a double-crossing title, a slivered spine corroding on a mountaintop. It sashayed high and low along a current of hormonal exchanges bouncing from one wall to another igniting feral waves to detonate thoughts of hopeful swallows hung up with powder-blue skies of a pretend-summer's dream. An acquaintance forced by a lyrical goddess, and an expected wanting of dusk and movement, pointlessly judging delated tapes of broken promises, the disappearing eve vindicated a two year's worth of seclusion with a non-acidic page sealed with a crossroad letter shared over an unstable fast food table. And there was an applause, a reverberating "ahh..." secretly hovering with a mission, an unchanging image of peaceful poultry and elegantly stretched necks overlooking a falling river, almighty.

If you could keep a memory, real or imagined, what would you choose to remember?