When everything is about me.

Today I will make you shift your head to the right, direction.

I guess February is about winning and losing. About the handsome price we pay when we want something, and then some more. Of course life is about some things, some ones, and maybe a lot of some where's if we grant it some of our time. Perhaps February is about the ransom we're forced to relinquish, like a dowry or someone else's money.

For all its worth, February was cold and swiftly turned into a promise of hope, a walking muscle shirt, an idea hiding under moving paper cups, a confirmation of some sort, and then some other worlds too unreal to explain.

"My feelings are my reality"

"But that's not always correct".

"Doesn't change the fact that I feel them."

Last second randomness:
I like being in the middle to meddle and wiggle my silly ass off. What do YOU like?

I worship--

My story usually goes like this, every single thing that she touches, physically or in essence, will be marked. So yes, I am owned upon first handshake. If she gets me a glass of water, and I drink from that glass, I am owned from the insides. Imagine if it's a 3-second embrace.

There's something completely overwhelming about the way I like a person.

Let me put it this way. If I come to a decision that I like you, you can pick your nose in front of me and I would still like you. You may annoy me down to my last patient gene and I will still like you. I try to pretend, or at least would like to believe that I pull it off, that when I decide that I like a person, I refer to a you-ness that perhaps only I can grasp. No, I don't turn people into a concept. I take the person I like first as a name, then as a concept, til I feel her as a beating muscle, and I reconcile word and flesh. I bridge with her resonating sound, wrap my thoughts with her warmth, fog my mind with her breath, put none to waste, til her last falling hair--I commit to everything. Come as you are, says that song. If I decide that I like you, I'd like you in everything that you are and are not.

It's fascinating how almost always, people who seek my acceptance are those who I'd accept (most likely, have already accepted) in every way possible. There's something completely overwhelming about the way I like a person. It's scary, and almost always, it's because I get too scared myself. So there are words, and there are songs, and there are torn pages, and endless cursors blinking through the midnight's plight. 

From Tumblr

All the cool songs and hard-to-spell words, they're yours. 

I like reading.

Only two things can truly keep me up all night long: a good book and a girl.

So today I decided to re-arrange my bookshelf in search of my seemingly lost copy of Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. It's such a valuable copy/edition and I feel my heart break a little more every time I fail to find it. Yes, it got a bit more broken today.

On a lighter note. I piled up magazines where I wrote for and ended up with this (sorry, had to remove photo... privacy shit). I think I started writing around 2009, but only on the sides, and I'm quite a happy bee to realize that they're not as few as I thought they were. I got to cover the entire table, yey!

Other than my articles, my Starbucks 2009 2008 planner also resurfaced. This is probably my busiest planner because it has so many add ons and stick ons and whatsoever. It's truly more a scrapbook than a planner. In the spirit of commemoration, let me share with you a lovely conversation, an exchange on paper to be precise, that I got to experience with this girl I "dated" in 2009 2008. She's someone I fondly call K, and it's so interesting how my entries of her feel a bit fresh in my memory. I guess it goes without saying that when something good and honest happens, no matter how badly or even how soon it ends, it's fond to remember the good times.

K: So??? I don't know. I can't judge something that comes from the heart because there is no right or wrong answer. Actually, your "letter" just brings up more questions. I guess I interpreted it differently because I don't know how you felt when you wrote that. Has the person you're writing about read it already???
Me: Yes I think. I gave her a copy. It's a closure letter. Like before I go, I just had to say things I didn't get to say. Do you think it's okay?
K: Hmm... A goodbye letter... S? (S-- WTH I don't know how to spell her name) Yes it's ok... but sounded like you were still hung up on her when you wrote it.
M: S-- yeah, I guess I was but it's okay. Like after I wrote it, I'm good.
K: Hahaha!!! I knew it!!! Sorry sorry sorry. But that was like very recent huh... May, right?
M: Yes. Let me read please (pertaining to a paper she had out)
K: It was for class. About my dog that died. That's it. We had to write it on the spot. It's nothing, and stop changing the subject. So did she reply to your "closure letter"?
M: No she didn't. I'm not changing the topic. I'm begging you to let me read.you. Can't I know you more?
K: Know me? Haha... you won't find out anything from that worthless paper. It was like seatwork. Why do you want to read it so bad?
M: Because I really want to know what's in (points to a drawing on the paper, pointing on the head)
K: Wouldn't you rather like to know what's in (points to a drawing of a heart)
M: I do.
K: So it's better you don't read the paper. I am ashamed of it because it does not show what's in (points to a drawing, two arrows pointing to different things: the head and the heart)
M: Let me read something that's from your heart.
K: Well you have to learn to read me because I don't put it on paper or words because my lame words doesn't do my heart justice.
M: I try, always try my best to read you. I don't know if I do it write :s
K: Haha! No you don't do it RIGHT sometimes (mocking). Am I really that hard to read? If I am, I guess I like it that way.
M: TANGA KO!!! I wish I just cut (class, we were in class at that time, she sat in my class that's why we were exchanging papers) and we just hanged out or something. And yes, I think you're hard to read.
K: Ok. (then she drew a big O and K, encircled the K and put an arrow to it, pointing to an M, that was inside a heart... my college nickname starts with a letter M)

--- June 24 2008

Seriously... 'til now, I have no idea what that wild moment was about!

To those wondering, I figured it'd be proper to begin this post with No Umbrella because to me it's a song that is hugely about seeing things through with a person.

Right now, there's this girl who's territorial. I sometimes wonder if she also wants to own my past--something impossible because the past is over! Sometimes, it comes to a point where I wonder if she'd rather I have an empty past than like this, where I have these stories (bigger than life, or alive more than ever in my mind) where she is not a part of. I don't know if it's wrong to remember, I always figured, it's very honorable to do so.

Today I finished reading one of the books E recommended. I really liked how it ended. There was such a beautiful coming together as the novel reached that inevitable close. It was like a gorgeous display of fireworks where the tiny explosives you planted on air would light up together with the booming sounds and blooming pyro display. I liked how it went down my throat, how it made sense of the different flavors that I had to understand from beginning to end. It was an exquisitely aged wine, washing down the confusion with a just explanation.

When I read the above "memory" off my journal, I remembered how on that first lunch date with E, I got to read a few of her raw words. It was a poem fresh off the furnace, made in class, probably as her mind floated away. She immediately and rudely pulled the paper off my hand and I never got to read that particular poem again. She said she would email me a better poem, that she's just a bit too shut about her words especially when they're not yet on their final and polished stages. She emailed me already, but I'm still unsatisfied. I'm truly insatiable, I will not argue with that; but reading above "memory" reminded me of how she said she would also send me that very poem, once it's finalized.

I wonder how much waiting would cost, this time.

A brief history of time

Once upon a glass, there was an exchange of murmurs only the sharpest of tongues could comprehend. There were sonic waves bouncing against wood, plastic and recycled tin cans which only the ballsy can dare catch sans proper playing gear.

Perhaps because it isn't a game. Sure doesn't feel like one. My feelings are my reality, I always say. Question not the inappropriate clothing, or the nakedness of each opportunity. The important thing is, each window is seized. But...

Do you think of me when you're with her? she asked.

I wish I asked too.

Some answers 2: Affection

A friend asked, "what is light/warmth/affection?" as if I knew how to answer, and I took the responsibility of indulging as if I have answers to betroth. This friend is the becoming of scratched surface and wine, FYI. I have no idea why she would bother seek my thoughts, though if it's because my mind is hardly locked in her presence, I shall never know. She said she knew pain and tenderness, perhaps like a bruise that never heals. But I think when she said she knew longing and loss, the "little" that she comprehends about loving isn't so little at all.

I'd hate to take credit but let's say we can assume roles--assuming it's raw enough to leave settled to distant lakes that breed Loch Ness.

And by "it" I mean the subtle admission.

What is affection?
Affection is the raging confession that a person can stir words out of smoke and carbon as a magician would pull endless silk out of seemingly regular sleeves. It is the perversion of innocent gestures into roots of malice, spawning indifference towards reason. To have affection is to admit defeat, and if the Universe permits, to oddly gain everything there is for each minute to offer.

The difference between feeling and affecting is action. So affection is beats and movement. Affection is aggression.

Affection is the brevity of stolen time. It's the first five seconds of a song, the prick of a needle, the gasp of air before a dive. It's the heat of Sriracha, the friction between skin and leather, the last line of a poem.

To the brave, affection is the drawing of the sword. To the lost, it's the heirloom of forgotten bookmarks.

And after all the words bloom forcibly against a glaring page, affection is simply the silence.

That silence. That sort-of-clean table that means Something.

And weeks begin, for days roll by, so on the seventh day (or any given), affection rests and knows it is Good.

PS. This is an example of my world-known iPhoneJournalism.

Some answers 1: Light

A friend asked, "what is light/warmth/affection?" as if I knew how to answer, and I took the responsibility of indulging as if I have answers to betroth. This friend is the becoming of scratched surface and wine, FYI. I have no idea why she would bother seek my thoughts, though if it's because my mind is hardly locked in her presence, I shall never know. She said she knew pain and tenderness, perhaps like a bruise that never heals. But I think when she said she knew longing and loss, the "little" that she comprehends about loving isn't so little at all.

Cause right now, my nose feels tender. I went overboard my me-time last night and used this heavenly purifying mud pack, then exfoliated my face, then proceeded to extraction of stubborn whiteheads... and today the only meaning of tenderness that I know is sponsored by the odd feeling of pain when I touch my nose, even the slightest.

What is light?
I remember buying the book The Unbearable Lightness of Being because I liked the images the title conjured in my puny head. Given, it's a well-loved book, followed by praise and veneration by people such as I who carry melancholic little hearts; suffice it to say that I bought it like a stranger to a casino. The dice jumped off my palm, rolled and landed on both darkness and light. I can't bring myself to say something about the book other than I felt lost in it, a very usual effect of second-hand pleasures on me. To know what light is is to find comfort in the unbearable exposure of self. For others to pick on, for others to judge, for others to segregate with hopes that there would be another to welcome all the scattered pieces.

I told E, she who carries poems in her womb, that I choose to live this life floating. Floating because I learned that it's most fun and comfortable for me to lose a bit of the control and take flight, albeit just a few inches of the ground for a few seconds. To float is to know the distance between your ideals and your reality--and to stand in that inbetweener world--with pleasure. I like floating because it gives me the luxury to reach for the impossible, as if I were a foolish dreamer who can afford such foolishness *such foolishness!* without me being forced to ever forget that I should be grounded by concrete and tangible factors such as feelings, people, responsibilities and well, my physical needs of satisfaction and fulfillment.

To be light is to be air and boldness. I feel lightest when I can breathe easily, and I breathe easily when I am honest to myself. I feel lightest when the world that surrounds me is a beauty, and by beauty I mean a realness that I didn't stir with my own finger. I feel lightest when I know that there are things I don't know but don't even need to know in order to stretch my lips half an inch wide from the sides. I feel lightest when my mind is quiet, and it's quiet mostly in the arms of love.

I dislike romantically speaking of love for I tend to speak like a frustrated bard. But love, heady or complacent, is a feeling that helps me feel lightest. I feel lightest when I can put my baggage down, not an inch away from my side, perhaps with the sling weaved tightly on both wrists, but put down nonetheless.

I feel lightest when I see lightning strike. It's scary yet majestic to imagine the heavens quarrel and play bowling when the rain is pouring hard.

Consequently, I feel lightest when I laugh so hard I forget that something's funny, and I just end up exhausting the blissful blessing of a moment such as... yes, that.