the heart is a garden

So then walk with me this way. Let us take a turn among the shrubbery and get lost in the wild roses blushing against the kiss of daylight fading. Feast your eyes on the greens of my life, that spring forth from the soil from which I take root, the rich thud of its solid presence invites a glance -- the heart is a labyrinth of earth beneath my feet. Do you dare to walk this path if you knew the soil was soft and thin with tears?

tbc

delayed reaction

this is just to quickly say how thankful i am you NEVER became my boyfriend. idiot. you think i forgot all about your url? yeah well, this should remind me to clean up my browser history once in a while.

speaking of which, that's probably where you belong, you with your hypocrisy and your double-talk about being wounded and jaded about past hurts and all that shit about not wanting to find someone new. and you never even had the decency to tell me face to face, or at least call me up to tell me you weren't really into it and you were just leading me on. and now you're all soooo wrapped up in self-pity because that troll you traded me down for is nowhere near your calloused palms.

i really, really hope you're reading this because finally i can say it -- you were not impressive in bed. i've had better. much, much better. and you weren't even the one stuck in a bus for half a day, at that.

i look back and think about the kind of person you are, and i realize it wasn't my time to be a "daddy". i'd probably raise a kid of my own in the future, but when you said you liked me and then went around again and screwed THAT creature you call your current-long-distance-boyfriend, i realize i would've been stuck with an imbecile if you hadn't been yourself. to call you childish would be an insult to children everywhere. and i believe in children's rights. but this daddy ain't raising you, sweetheart. i want a man, not a boy who thinks he can.

You're Not My Market!

I was going through the lounge music rack at Odyssey in Gateway, when Cess walks up to me from the soundtracks section and says "she was checking you out."

"who?"

"that girl in the red shirt who just went out"

"oh god, not again."

this has been going on for the past few weeks. i have a suspicion it's been going on for a couple of years, but has just become more pronounced lately because i have began to pay more attention: girls have been checking me out, adding me on friendster and once, one even tried to be textmates with me -- a dubious "19,f, makati" -- who only stopped sending me messages when i told her i'm "38, m, QC".

the other day on friendster a girl (assuming she's legit, of course) even sent me a PM asking me, quite simply, and quite tastelessly so, if i wanted a fuck. *shiver*

is it the beard? is it the puppy-look eyes and the droop of the shoulders? the "generally decent and approachable boy next-door look with just a hint of naughty" that gets them? now i can understand it if girls were checking me out in a record store, or in a 7-11, for instance (sheesh). but how do i explain those anonymous texters? what is going on in here? do i not look gay enough?

cess tells me that yes, i do not look gay enough. in fact she's had a couple of boyfriends before who were not only once jealous of me. when i went to her house a few years back, her family thought i was her boyfriend, and apparently they were not upset, until she told them all how much the thought of us being lovers made her want to throw up (me too!) and that i'm gay. a month ago i had this thing also happen with hazel in conspiracy, and thank goodness i had that cleared up immediately. and in friendster, i've gone back to change my profile to explictly state "dating men" just so i can weed out crushers from those girls who really are interested in friendship.

but imagine me trying to be cute while i'm having coffee and instead of that cute guy sitting accross, it's the girl sitting next to him that looks at me. this is a sick, cruel twist to what is usually described as "love working in mysterious ways".

apparently i'm too macho for my own good. but that's society's problem, not mine. i am not about to wear make up to emphasize a point. and eventhough i sound like a woman on the phone, i am not about to take down estrogen pills anytime soon so i can grow boobs. people think just because i don't fit the stereotype homo on either extremes means i'm a member of that near-extinct species -- guys who are neither gay nor taken.

the stereotype now is two-fold, i think. on the one hand is the age-old parlorista caricature, effeminate and loud. but a new stereotype is arising, one which i am closer to approximating but never quite comfortable with because it is so full of pretensions: the macho-drag. this is the muscle-shirt crowd defined mostly by its members' toned bodies, ripped abs, tight ass, chiseled looks, and an overgenerous dose of hair products. this is the guy that barry walked up to in will and grace, and upon seeing him just as he was about to say hello said "no" with a wave of his hand. this is the multi-awarded actor who floats a chismis that he has a kid to douse reports that he was caught getting a blowjob from a fellow TV host in the parking lot of his mother studio. this is the snobbish, vain, self-centered stereotype i call the macho-drag because they make it look like macho IS the new drag.

although the attention is most welcome, it is still a bit unsettling to think i am attracting the wrong crowd. for someone who is neither pa-mhin nor effem, how do i make rampa if people can't tell outright just what i am looking for?

shaking hands with a dictator?!?

There is something terribly wrong with this picture. In behalf of all outraged Burmese may I pray to whoever is up there for this image to fade away from my memory the soonest possible time. Geez!

Read up.

haven't had a movie stuck in my head in weeks...

...quite like this one. and it's all this guy's fault. from the moment i heard the theme song (which by the way requires Real Player), the movie's been in my mind, and i have been looking forward to watching it. in the process though, i have made three promises to three different people and now i don't know who i'm going to watch it with.

but first things first, i am not even sure if they'll be showing it anytime soon. the trailers are all over the movie theaters, but so far no fixed date has been set yet. *grunt* and over the past few weeks i have been tirelessly watching the video of blower's daughter and the melody just haunts me. (and so does the thought of copyright infringement should sony discover i'm using their pics here -- but hey, they should be glad i'm actually promoting their movie, right?)

needless to say i am enthralled by the storyline. (check out the link to the official website on the right-hand sidebar.) it's basically about four people and the interplay of emotions between their messy relationships. it's about a pair of lovers and the merry mix of jealousy, hatred, passion and desire that brews up when two of them have a relationship behind their lovers' backs. i keep thinking -- some people don't even have any relationship, and these four losers trip all over themselves screwing up what a lot of people do not have. gee, exciting -- must watch, must watch!


obviously it sounds like a lot of fun to me, especially with the notable performances of clive owen and natalie portman. when they won the golden globes, i was ecstatic. my expectations hit the roof. i guess they are really that goo din this movie. but then again, who knows. but still, my hopes were raised on this movie, and with eye candy like jude law, i was even more excited. i must have played the blower's daughter a hundred times already, and that scene of natalie portman walking down the street, standing out with the pink hair and all, is just so lovely to look at. :D

i have heard nothing but praises for the director, mike nichols, which is another good indicator. and if i am not mistaken, tomorrow's change of movies at the cinemas should mean that 'closer' would be showing by tomorrow, that is, if the local distributor decides to take advantage of the lack of strong competitors. all the other blockbusters are fading out of the screens anyway, so it should be an opportune time for closer to be shown already. i'm checking it out tomorrow, and by heaven's grace, i do hope it will show na. otherwise, i'll be stuck again for another couple of weeks anticipating with bated breath. *sigh*

(article edited feb 23 8:38 pm)

*************

damien rice in the video

kinda cute with the dimples, no? :)

"i am haunted by water."

this video has been played a total of 45 times on my launchcast. talk about obssessed! hehe. but i really like it. haven't been this passionate about a song in quite some time. so to take me away from this song, i am re-acquainting myself with Train, especially their songs that weren't that popular. :D - hopeless, i'm about to come alive, when i look to the sky, etc. *sigh*

a revelation at the fair

so there we were, tune and i, having fun at saturday's diliman fair. we had just gotten off the ferris wheel where i spent the first minute hanging on to my pants for fear of falling off the rickety seats we were on, until i got the hang of it and actually enjoyed the breeze against my face, my arms and my body as we zoomed up backwards and fell forward in circles again and again.

we decided if we could do the ferris wheel, we could conquer the wall climb and so dashed off to go there and sign up with nary a thought runing in our heads but just to jack up our thrill.

i went barefoot. i wasn't even thinking that the wall was actually THAT high. apparently it was about a hundred feet up, but i didn't care. i just wanted to get to the top. more than halfway through i gave up.

my fet were getting tired, my knees were shaking and my head felt whoozy. i hadn't exactly been feeling well, but nevertheless it was no excuse.

but the funny thing is, when i yelled "down!" i was told to hang on to the rope and let go.

and i couldn't.

'let go sir, you won't fall down, trust me!' i heard the guy holding my line yell at me a couple of times.

but i didn't.

'i think i'll just climb down' i said, and started to descend, footing my way down. then i heard the guy say 'let go' again a couple more of times, but i didn't.

until i realized climbing down wouldn't be as easy as getting up, so i held on to the rope with my right hand, but kept clinging onto the wall with my left.

'let go!' i heard the mountaineers say again.

at that point i was irritated.

'you won't be there when i fall! i can't! i can't! i can't!' i said to myself in my head.

'let go vincent! you can do it, they'll catch you!' i heard tune say from behind me.

fatigue got the better of me. i let my left hand go and leaned back against the wall and descended quick.

in no time i was on the ground.

although we laughed about it afterwards, in the back of my head i was thinking why i couldn't let go.

it was so easy, actually. all i had to do was hang on to the rope and free fall.

obviously i have trust issues. yikes.

so what am i to do? go on another wall-climbing session, of course.

what goes around

comes around. and so i have concluded: in a past life i must have been very, very evil. otherwise i wouldn't be 27 and single. *guffaw*

hmm. makes me think -- what kind of evil? i must have fucked around a lot with a lot of women and left them with my seeds (yucky as that sounds). i was probably rich and handsome, coveted by all, owned by none. i must have been a prince or something. an evil prince. in a despotic kingdom where subjects were levied a third of their crops and made to work on castles with three-story moorings and impenetrable walls.

i must have been imperious in my whims, demanding with my lust. i must have had dozens of women, virgins all, and made them do unspeakable horrors to satisfy my cravings.

i must have stolen a farmer's wife or something, kept her in bondage while her husband had to make do with the backyard goat. maybe i put her to death because she wouldn't serve me well. maybe i had her kids thrown in jail just for the heck of it. maybe i had her husband sodomized by palace guards. i must have inflicted so much suffering on other people that i was hated, spoken of only in whispers lest my subjects be thrown in dungeons where skeletons lay splayed against brickstone walls thick with moss and grime.

i must have been one hell of a chauvinist pig. i must have thought women as nothing mroe than slots to fill in with my humongous dick. (well at least i had THAT. maybe). women served only one purpose, and one purpose only -- to serve food on the table, and if the food is not any good, then they should lay there for me to take them as i please.

i must have been a warmonger, conquering lands the size of Laguna, destroying kingdoms that would not pay taxes, bringing barons down to their knees, raping their women, pillaging their villages, burning down homes and taking their gold.

i must have been very proud of myself, and hungry for power. i must have been one hell of a tyrant.

so god punishes me by making me pussyphobic in this life. but before that, he makes sure i am born middle-class, which is, come to think of it, worse than being actually poor. [neither here nor there, with one swift stroke of the economy you could find yourself rich, then in another stroke, find yourself poor. isn't that even more tragic?]

then to rub it in, god makes sure no gay guy in his right mind falls in love with me, no matter how much pomp and grace i try to inject into my apperances and my style.

then god makes it even harder for me by making me a writer. heavens, be an engineer and you can build roads and bridges. be a lawyer and you can turn the law around to your favor. be a doctor and earn big bucks off dying people. but instead, he makes me write. write, write, you asshole, write. all you can do is whine and bitch about your misfortunes, and the big someone up there goes back in the bathtub scratching his back with a loofah.

there is a price to be paid for things we may not even know in this life. which is kinda unfair, don't you think? but life lessons need not be confined to only one life. if human beings were cosmic energies incarnate, and we dissipate into energy once our physical selves expire, then do we carry the charge of our previous lives into the next? are souls really just recycled versions of ourselves in distant pasts?

my other life must have been so desperate, so isolated, that i was a tyrant who demanded respect but never earned it. all because deep down inside i never thought i deserved it.

is that the lesson i have to learn in this life? that in order to find love, i must begin with self-respect? is asking out a gorgeous gay guy out, someone sooooo out of my league affirming my self-value? does any self-respecting person ever do that?

well, maybe. but who cares. in my past life i must have had skin so pure, so white that my feet never even touched the ground. literally. i'd have my peons lay down carpets in my path before feeding mys oldiers into death's grip in warfare and conquest.

so in this life, i am grounded, never touching sky, when i could be the best thing to happen to anyone, if i really let them knew.

in my past life i must have had a tower of silvers coins and gold bars stocked up to overflowing with my greed, so that in this life i have to work my ass off for every peso that comes in and out of my pocket.

in short, in my past life i must have been one HUGE jerk. which is why now i'm a very, very nice person. [oh, but yeah, god must have decided to let me carry over into this life my penchance for lying, just for kicks.]

my hair won't stay in place!

(a rant piece, obviously)

because i felt like it had started to brittle and DIE, i decided to leave the house today with no hair product on me -- the first time since i stopped getting haircuts (sometime in November 2004).

it's terrible. my hair is up, it's going in all directions, and simply won't be combed down into submission.

eileen says my hair will probably be long enough for styling by march, but nina tells me i should get my hair done by april instead. and i do feel april will be better for me. so that's another two months of messy hair before, what, i don't know exactly. rebond? relax? hot oil? straightening? most votes go in favor of rebonding, but sometimes i have the urge to just walk into a barber shop and have it shaved. that's how pissed i am sometimes.

but this is what i signed up for when i said i wanted a new version of me.

[recap: first i trimmed down to a waistline that is scandalously thin for my mother and some friends (from a probable high of 36 to now 29), i dropped about 50 pounds or something, stopped shaving for a while then took out the mustache because... well, just because with the eyebags it made me look like a petty criminal.

then the wardrobe had to change. tight fits are in, all my XL shirts are now gathering dust or waiting to be shipped out to the next calamity area. the baggy pants are out and straight cuts with chemical wash and wrinkles on the thigh area are in.]

all for that 'fashionably sensitive but too cool to care' look.

in short, i wanted character, and the hair is part of the package. as i read somewhere else: forehead = wisdom; wisdom = boring; boring = death. ergo, forehead = death. but until i have grown my hair to a comfortable length at which bangs can form, i will have to keep slicking it back with gel, style it with mousse and stay away from dust-infested places to avoid dandruff.

i have four kinds of combs on my drawer, two of them fine-toothed, to give my hair that discipline which Manila traffic often takes away after two hours of commuting. I have a brush for before going to bed because i think it relaxes my hair as the brush allows it to puff up like a mild afro as i lie down in bed. then i have a spare comb for the shaggy nights when i have to hit the shower first, but let's not go into details.

i use up about two bottles of gatsby every month, because it's the best brand around (don't use master gel! don't use tricks! don't use anything else!) but the sun is not exactly its best friend, and for those times when i find myself going to the office at 11 am (uhmm, actually about three times a week. okay, maybe four...) i can only guess how cooked my hair has already gotten by the time i get to the office.

and it gets worse everytime i wake up in the morning. i realize my hair isn't really all that thick and luscious as i'd hoped. it's actually very sparse and rare around the top. my mother points out that it runs in the family, both hers and my dad's. all at once i feel doomed, and almost at once consign myself to the cruel logic of genes.

but i refuse to believe that. what i need is hair therapy.

something which perci is just too happy to give. he catches me writing this and exclaims "bakla! wag mong padapain ang buhok mo!". we are at the HQ and i am writing a press release for tomorrow's picket at mendiola regarding the state visit of myanmar's prime minister. (which is something really terrible and important, which is why it will NOT be discussed here.)

"but i always thought it looks better dressed down," i say, and he starts flipping his fingers all over my locks and frumps them up and through.

the end result, he says a minute later, is now character and volume. "use your fingers" he screams at me, and asks me if i watch QEFTSG. of course i do, and i've seen that episode (heaven forbid i miss KYAN handing out tips like THAT!)where kyan tells us to start applying gel from the back to the front, and to use ONLY our fingers for styling. been there, done that, and i felt awkward following the second instruction.

in any case, i light a cig and shake my head from side to side and feel my hair bouncing. i guess the jigs (hmm.. jigs!) perci gave did some good. it makes me think: is slicked back really out, and is chaos in? can i pull it off on days when i have to be in my best behavior (as if!) and best looks in front of crooks in lawmaking sessions? best, perhaps to carry extra sachets of gatsby in my kikay kit, just in case.

in the meantime, i am crawling the web looking for fixing tips and other research that might help me in my conundrum. i surf the sites and watch out for david's or provost (pricey, so no go), and eileen tells me she will take me to this salon in katipunan when IT IS TIME. save up, she tells me, which is her way of saying the trip will probably inflict bad-ass damage on my budget, especially if it entails consultations or whatever.

*sigh* april cannot come too soon. by then i expect my brother to be out of the house, i will be living in a new apartment, and my hair will be fab. thirteen months in the making already, this new version. but for now, i'm still hairballing*.

ah, beauty. how forked and complicated your path is. *giggle*



(hairballing - just a new word i coined, who the hell cares what it means)

postscript to THAT day

so THAT day passed and went by, thankfully. i was going to say uneventful, but it was, terrorist attack and all. nevertheless, on a personal level i did find myself out on monday night, eating out with mom at baywalk along the now rehabilitated manila bay.

i was toying with the idea of coming out to her that night, but couldn't. it wasn't for anything other than two mishaps. one, walking around the seawall strip trying to find a table took out so much of my energy, and second, waiting for our food to arrive got both of us so pissed we hardly had time to talk once they did arrive on our table.

otherwise, it was an enjoyable night. nevermind that we stood out from the rest of the lovey-dovey crowd. there were no parent-children pairs i could see for miles, except for one, and the guy, who was with his mom, i presume, was cute, throwing me glances while we were passing by.

otherwise, if you really want to find cuties, the baywalk was NOT the place to be on that night.

as i recalled my date to eileen and nina, i wondered out loud " i have no idea where the cuties all were!"

"they were probably all in bed with someone already," eileen pointed out, and i see the logic in her conclusion.

yeah, well, it's not as if i had a bad time. it was good to get away for a while -- for mom. it's been ages since we last went out, just the two of us, and since i have been working my ass off (on days like this one, for example), it was a chance to just take a walk and talk.

and besides, it did help that while we were walking i could feel some eyes on me, for whatever reason. it just felt nice. i couldn't care less if people think me weird because of my "date". i had fun. so i guess V-Day didn't turn out all that bad. except for that terrorism thing earlier in the evening.

the day after it was back to good old friends, good old work, and the day past didn't even seem to matter anymore. just as i had hoped.

now that the cupid cut-outs and the heart shaped chocolates are off the shelf, it is time to move along and get on with life, as it is and as it should be. single, yes. but not alone.

barbarians in our midst

There's blood on the streets again.

It's so sad, really. To attribute misery and poverty to religion. While I do think that Muslim minorities in the country do struggle with even more marginalization than the average Christian, I don't think religion accounts for the problem, nor is the solution a holy war against members of another faith.

The recent bombings in the business center, and in a couple of cities in the South are not the first, nor will they be the last. But the important thing to remember is that these few people who are emboldened by a sense of religious righteousness do not speak in behalf of the rest of the Muslim community. And they never will. Every single day, initiatives are going on in the rest of the country to encourage more dialogue and interfaith exchanges to bring to light the dilemma that is Mindanao. The vast majority of Filipino Muslims are not violent, fundamental types out for Christian blood.

Government should lead the way in showing that this is so. By putting its money where its mouth is. Not by issuing empty threats. Mindanao should be right there in the middle of its development agenda. Its policies are however very discouraging. From the anti-terrorism bills, to the national ID system, to the ongoing military exercises with American troops in Mindanao, to renewed military offensives in predominantly Muslim communities -- this government, like those before it, gets it all wrong.

What we need are concrete steps to definitively address the Mindanao debacle. The issue of Mindanao is not a military problem; it is first and foremost a matter of finding an economic and political solution. Poverty, disempowerment and under-representation are not issues of religion, but of social structures and power relations.

As I've said somewhere else, if government continues to pursue its policies – namely the continued presence of US troops, the holding of military exercises (in Peace Zones, nonetheless!), and the possibility of massive extraction of resources with no assurances of benefits to the local communities and only the threat of continued displacement and conflict – will naturally set Muslims farther and farther from the mainstream of our country’s political life and closer and closer into the folds of groups like the Abu Sayyaf. The greater fear we have to exorcise now is whether government will be able to carry out its promise to put a stop to these killings, or again rely on its soldiers to do the talking.

For both government and the terrorists: shame, shame, shame.

stop making excuses!

sorry, but this site will be down on february 14. there will be no conspiracies, no exponential analysis of unrequited passions, no settling, no searching, no nothing.

it will be a blank page. not because of anything other than that i have crossed out the date on my calendar as a day in which i will be W-O-R-K-I-N-G. i just don't get it. i met up with cess and len last night at UP, (after which we ditch len, the illustrado-in-the-making and proceed to Market! Market! riding the taxicab from hell). and all the while a significant portion of our time together was spent talking about what we would be doing on the 14th.

is it on monday? i didn't even realize, i tell them, which was the goddamned honest truth.

cess has her plans pretty much cleared up for her, courtesy of keech (yes, they're back together -- in all the months i haven't seen her they've apparently gotten back together for good.) len on the other hand has a date with her boyfriend, LL. B. so we're leaving her to her books and her jurisprudence shit.

obviously i was the only one who did not have any plans.

but honestly the only way i knew for sure that v-v-v-vaa-valeen-leentuh-tuh-tuh--yyyyns day was coming up was only when i saw those chocolates for sale on 7-11 the other night and today, when i noticed how the prices of flowers at Vis Ave have gone up.

otherwise, the only thing on my mind the past few days have been: 1) how to figure out audblog, because i want to try it out, 2) finishing my backlog with APL and PARRDS and 3) sustaining my boss's presence in the Inquirer since Thursday.

after cess and i went our own ways last night, i get a message from rocketman asking where i was. i figured he and my badminton buddy tune were together at Sharky's, a fact she confirmed in a separate message after i replied to rocketman's.

half-heartedly i go, if only to prove to myself i could hang out with him after all that bullshit from last year's episode. actually things have settled down between us, and it's safe to say we're friends now. so hanging out at Sharky's with them was more a way to pass away time since it was 1 am anyway, so i might as well be totally late going home, right?

in any case, as soon as i got there, beer was waiting and they were in the middle of talking about monday as if it were some Armageddon-level scenario and what they would be doing then. and i got an invitation to hang out at Malate, but I make no promises.

this morning i log on to my egroups and find the same stuff littering my egroups, about the rules of love, keeping up relationships, and the BIG PLAN for the 14th, etc.

it seems that everyone is so busy making plans for monday (i thought tuesday) for only two reasons: to flaunt the fact that they're not alone, or to hide the fact that they are.

if going out on monday means bonding with fellow singles and casting away the negative stereotypes we attach to being in our mid/late-20s and single then i'd rather not go out at all.

i mean i love my friends, i love them dearly, but do we have to make a big fuss about going out on monday just because we all know what date it is? i always thought hanging out meant playing it by ear, but now, people are falling all over themselves working out details and planning everything up to the last minute. i don't want any of that.

so i have resolved that on monday i will WORK. way into the night. maybe go home at 1 am straight from the office. after all, it's not even a holiday! so shutting down the chronicles will be my way of keeping my mind on track and make sure i fulfill my promise.

the only way i'll be out on monday is if it's me and my mom eating out. flowers for her, definitely. but friends, single and otherwise, will have to make do without me on that day.

if getting together on monday means i won't have to be reminded of being single then i'd rather wallow. for those of us with no SOs to speak of, it seems getting together with friends has become a way to forget the fact. it's not even about sharing love. if you really love your friends then showing it doesn't have to climax with an all-night-out party on the 14th. you show it everyday.

so what other purpose would going out on the 14th serve a single gay guy like me? nothing.

i'm single and i make no excuses. let everybody else flaunt or hide the fact. me? i'm going on with my life.

Conversations with an Absent Lover, Part 1

Bong walks over to serve two cups of coffee, and he knows exactly my pereference: two sachets of both sugar and cream.

"You have no idea how much fat is in that stuff," he says, referring to the creamer packs.

Bong asks if we want anything else, and I decline.

"Maybe we'll have some cake later," he says.

"And you're warning me about fats?" I smile.

"Thought you were conscious about your weight," he reminds me. "I'm not."

"I am. A bit. Uhm, yeah. I'd say so, yes."

"There you go."

"It's just that I had to do a lot of work on this," I tell him, meaning to say my body. "I shouldn't probably tell you this, but I used to be a 36 waistline."

*he laughs*

"Oh no. I knew it."

"No, it's not that."

"Then..?" I shift in my seat.

"It's just that.. I don't know.." he pauses. "Don't you think it's weird?"

"What?"

"It's weird," he says again. He bends over,reaches for his bag below the table, a black Jansport piece with huge zips in the front and teflon straps on the back. He reaches inside and brings out his PDA. "Don't you think it's odd how people nowadays are so obsessed over hte way they look..uhm, I ah, I mean, uhmm. Yeah it's important but.." he continues, without looking up at me, scrolling with his stylus on his PDA.

"Haha. You'll say it's not important.." I begin to rebut.

"Yeah, it's important," he interrupts me midway through my sentence "but it's just that.." he stops and looks up at me.

"Uhm-hmm?"

"Do you think I wouldn't have gone out with you if I imagined you were fat?"

"Maybe, I don't know," it was my turn to be vague and elusive. "some guys wouldn't."

"Yeah well, too bad." he says. "Too bad for them."

The flattery isn't lost on me. And while I do not want to fall for them, flattery always have a way of getting to me. And it shows. I blush.

"Nice. Score."

"Point?" he asks, smiling, solid white teeth shielding the depth of his mouth like soldiers in pristine armour.

"Sure. Point." I smile back, feeling awkward with my British teeth and nicotine overloaded lips.

He glances down back into his palm pilot and shows it to me.

"Here, look."

"That's you?" I ask.

"Yeah," he proclaims. "Was."

Empathy. Like a thought that one could read direct from another person's mind. Two seeds in the middle of an apple fruit, ripe, the wind battering the crust, falls upon the ground. The earth consumes the thick layer of succulent fruit and exposes the seeds. The seeds separate only to grow into one tree once again with the passing of a season.

My feet are planted where I am seated. Earth on my feet. Seeds in my stomach. The coffee loses steam. Eyes meet smile.

hmm!

This looks interesting. I wish I could go, but at the risk of coming off pretentious who would want to go, right?

I sometimes think that my heart would fall for someone who had the right verses that would speak directly and only to me, but the truth is I don't really believe that.

Besides, I've been told artists are a dififcult bunch to deal with. Hopefully the stereotype isn't true. But who knows.

In any case, I'm just thinking of things to do to fil up my next few weeks. I've backed out of the four-day mountain climb with Tune because my schedule simply won't allow it. I'm currently negotiating a round at the nearby badminton court but she says Che won't be available tomorrow.

So what is a deprived social butterfly to do?

Maybe I'll just hang out later at Tats.

My Lovelife is So Vibrant I Can't Put It Down Into Words

the book of love

thanks to marnie, i am introduced to Peter Gabriel through a sample work that is incidentally on the soundtrack of Shall We Dance? and while i haven't checked out that movie (J.Lo? Err...) i must say, the peter gabriel song itself makes me want to do away with late night blogging and run off to Gateway.

and yes, obviously i've been blogging the past few nights. initially it was because i didn't have anywhere else to go, but tonight, i wanted to make over the layout and so i went and clicked on a new template and fixed the sidebar (yet again) and while it isn't finished yet (i am going to have to figure out a way to put up better icons and other graphics)i think i've found the template that fits me just fine. i think it's safe to say this template will be staying with me for a long time. or is it the other way around?

anyway, i'm also tidying up my links, eventhough most of those linked on the right panel don't have any idea i've linked them.

but eventually, my blog updates will have to wait. peter gabriel's song is again reminding me of something i've been putting on hold off for quite some time now. i need to get out there and see for myself what the "meet market" looks like nowadays. i mean, i don't want to fall in love or anything, but i just want to have fun for a while. test out my social skills. blah blah. get laid, or something. okay maybe barring the sex side, just coffee and a movie will do. i'm essentially a social animal, with a positive outlook in life in spite of everything that might convince me otherwise.

i am actually eager to go through the book of love once again. maybe just a peek, a momentary glance into some pages before i move on to more urgent work stuff. otherwise i'll be blogging for the next few weeks with not much to say except i have updated my blog and the design and i feel so cute being able to clean it up so well.

how pathetic is that?!?

the other peregrine

i am seriously thinking of putting up a separate blog for all my political writings. for those of you who are not in the know, this blog is an escape from the usual political harangue and propaganda that i churn out everyday without let up for as long as i can remember now. for the most part i like it, but politics leaves out a lot of dreaming unless its for a socialist vision.

so i put up the chronicles to track just exactly where my personal life has been throughout all the politial campaigns i have gotten myself into. but in the end, if my words are really to be of use then why not let people see what kind of principles i have been articulating asa mouthpiece for a progressive legislator, right?

these were my thoughts while i sat through the dead hours of the afternoon listening to government officials whine about the decay of our society's moral fiber because of the proliferation of smut, particularly in the tabloids.

well, i don't have anything against government regulation, if it's in the right place, but something really irked me about the proposed legislation seeking todefine pornography. and it is precisely the definition of the word, ingeniously provided by the proposed bills, that really got to me, and the concept that government is stepping in to draw a line between what is and what is not good for the public good as relating to the mass media.

as a journalism graduate i have learned that the best way to ensure press freedom is to let the industry take care of its business. government has no business telling the media what exactly is fit for public consumption.

pornography is what it is when i see it.

government has no right to tell me that what i see inspires prurient thoughts and therefore i shouldn't see it. what may be shocking to one politician may not necessairly be for anyone else.

anyway i was rolling my eyes and a stupid smirk stuck on my face all the while, since it was all i could do as an observer (protocol, you see). the only saving grace was that the panel was chaired by a dashing young man who used to be a tv reporter (ok, ok, it was gilbert remulla). but then he started talking about cracking down on smut by hauling off the retailers's asses to jail instead as a stop-gap measure, and it really irritated me. how anti-poor!

as they stand, the entire gamut of anti-pornography bills pending in this institution are another bunch of those unnecessary initiatives clogging up the already snail-paced legislative mill. (and there goes the cover for where i work, but i really have to say this).

and hten toorrow another committee will be tackling the dreaded terrorism bills, which i'm sure will all be about how to keep our country safe and sound from the threats of bombing squads and hired killers. but exactly where is the threat coming from? scandalous!

and that is a glimpse of how political i really am, even though the chronicles have always been about heartaches, bad dates, good sex, imaginary lovers and fantasies about travelling. in order to avoid posts like this one again, another blog is called for.

and besides, maybe i'm cuter when i'm a rah-rah soldier.

i am almost broke. the coffers are drying up and i am silently counting the days to payday. so much so that i am wracking my brains trying to recall just who owes me how much.

it is at times like this that i get to thinking about how my existence seems to have been bottomlined into waiting for the next paycheck to arrive.

in another life i am probably a wanderlust traveller hiking off in mountains (NPA-free ones, of course), walking down cobblestone roads and savoring alien languages or sipping coffee in some cafe by a european river.

maybe i should seriously consider that ERI ad i came across this morning. thailand could be a start. i don't know. this of course means i'm going to have to have a serious talk with mom who can't afford not to have me around.

but who knows?

on other fronts, i've added a message board to my blog which can be checked out at the sidebar. i was also stalking a couple of blogs earlier (you may begin to wonder whether i did anything work-related today, and i did, although i wasn't really that productive. nothing seems to come to me today) and wondered what oregon must be like. just a thought.

i probably should have another LB trip just to satisfy my craving for travel.

but paycheck first, please.

damn-fuck broke.

yeah, the peregrine does not live on words alone. at least not this one.

an ocean of ones and zeroes

at 3 am, marnie and i go our separate ways and make a promise to make sure we take another go at a night out and talk about everything and anything again. it was the closest thing i could come to a before sunrise moment, which i was quick to point out. it turns out marnie was also thinking the same thing. the only glitch? yeah, i'm not in THAT market.

i get to thinking, lying in bed, how the best conversations in my life have always been with women. which is not to say i do not have hets among my friends, but the women i have in my life just get me talking and i find it easier to relate to them. maybe it's because such exchanges have no malice, and i am acutely aware that i am not sweet-wording my way into these women's pants.

so the problem now is, how do i relate to someone i like?

when it comes to that question, it always feels like i have nothing to say. as if my words were so heavy and laden with meaning that if i said the wrong words or do not say them right then feelings will get lost in translation. that i would do the wrong thing with my words, so i don't speak at all.

'what's your name?'

'vince'

'uh-huh.'

'uhm.'

'so...'

'yeah.'

in his mind he must have been saying something like 'got anything else to say?' and in my mind i would have said 'zero' with an awful smile.

*******

at kahlil's birthday, i am amazed at just how many single people i know. sure there was a couple, and then tintin is married. but the rest were single people with no one in their lives right now. they are not going out on dates, i haven't heard them gush about a crush or rant about an ass or bitch that's messing them up inside. they spend their nights at tats playing pool, or at the office surfing the net playing zuma or bejewelled on yahoo. but as far as i know, none of these people have had dates in ages! and by rubbing it in they'll probably kill me.

but it just got me thinking yet again: do our friends define us, or do our definitions form our sets of friends?

are we just together because we have no option but to be together since no one's getting laid tonight anyway? or is it the other way around -- i'm not getting laid tonight so i might as well be with friends?

and the bigger question -- if everyone's just milling around as ones with no other ones on hand, what equation is required to turn them into twos? we are all just positively charged ones -- or in the case of some people, "minus ones" -- making logarithmic patterns in solitude because sparks are so hard to come by.

and yes, you can insert stephen bishop's line here about wondering whether finding the right place means recognizing the face, and i guess it's true. we're all just here, but why aren't more of us getting together in the intimate sense of the word?

'you seem like a nice guy. i hope to get to know you more in the future.'

maybe if we have more people saying stuff like that then maybe it could be a start.

***********

i shouldn't take sex as a measure of character. i probably shouldn't mistake bedroom histories as the measure of one's worth in a relationship. oh my god. is there anyone out there who hasn't heard that?

but in MY world, this takes on a whole new meaning. this means basically that you shouldn't care who's slept with who, and when and how often. and it's an idea the old me would have fought and denounced until he wasted all his energies. but not anymore, i hope. and besides, sex is sex. so much of it is going on in this world, (as of last count, at least 2 billion people have done it at least once -- and then are those whose liaisons do not necessarily beget children, like MY market, for example) and while it is nice to have some of it happen to me, why should i demand that others be denied of the same joys it gives?

now if you'll excuse me, there's a certain guy, who slept with someone i know, that i have to look up.

***

Friday Update

I swear. If I do not get heartbroken soon, this blog is just going to die. Not to mention also because I am yet pissed again because I had been typing up this article for the past 30 minutes only to lose the whole text because I pushed the refresh button. I'm beginning to think this Friday is fucking jinxed. And to think I have my favorite hot tight shirt on from Cardin, my i-want-some-kink-on-your-sofa shirt, I call it.

This hasn't been a good day for me. I started it late enough as it is, waking up at 10 am after an otherwise enjoyable evening with the Akbayan tropa, where we played a couple of rounds at the neighbourhood billiards, and mangled a couple of tunes until 2 am.

But on my way to the office this morning I discovered I had lost my ID, and the idea that I will now have to be extra nice to the security people in my building so they won't hassle me for identification is just gnawing me in my mind.

And then I get to the office and find my computer (yes, this very same one) had been infected with a trojan virus. Crap.

And then I type up a witty entry on my blog and lose it all because of a single click of the button. And while I love his voice, Seal is currently singing 'Prayer for the Dying' and eventhough it's a very positive song, the word dying is just sending shivers down my spine right now.

And to think this is a Friday night, that one night of the week when no one is supposed to be with no one. Damn it, if I had a boyfriend, this wouldn't even be an issue. We'd be fucking our brains out by now. But in any case it's just (ah screw this. let's not go there.)

I swear. I have to find an object of desire and be able to write about something other than how shitty my day had been, or else I might just as well kill myself.

Anyway maybe I should just dumb me down some more and either play Insaniquarium or browse Friendster. Because obviously this is another one of those boring days when the itch to put something down is just so insistent, but with nothing to say I have become just another voice in a sea of a million voices with nothing much to say except that I'm just buying time till I can bug someone readily available to have coffee with me.

on the other hand...

this is not about the energies i've spent outflowing towards those with whom so much had passed unsaid. instead, this is about me on the other end of affections i am sorry i couldn't return. a realization in search of love's divine, the unrecognized worthiness bestowed i was too blind to see.

if you were that guy i stood up years ago when i said i'd like to have coffee with you. if you were that guy who threw me sideway glances in figaro, whose eyes were met with raised eyebrows. if you were that guy a friend intorduced in a bar and i never called back. if you were that guy i promised to keep in touch with after a date i had to leave early. if you were that guy. sorry.

maybe it sounds too fake. maybe a little too late. this is just to say it's the same story elsewhere. it's the old jules running after michael running after kimmy dillema. it's the old everybody plays the fool sometimes plot. it's just the same old what kind of fool am i tune we all have sung at one point.

if feelings were that easy to command.

so this is just to say that i finally get it. it's all about the things that go around only to come around, my lesson to learn and learning it well.

this is just to say that grace is a virtue most undeniably central to any heartache, whether i am the one going through it or the one causing it.

and sorry, so hard to say with sincerity, is the first word that needs to be said if this lesson is to be of any use.

reformat

On the outside, it's easy to say 'i need a date' or 'i want a boyfriend'. but hte turth is, i'm still smarting from the cascade of letdowns i went through last year. and i'm tired of it. the truth is, it's going to take some time this time.

so in the absence of heartaches, the mind will have to travel a different path. when one reaches a point when nothing or no one inspires him, what else would there be to write about?

i take a look around me and realize i am surrounded by so many people with so many stories to tell. maybe it's time to give space to those stories. those who seek love's divine in their own private spaces, in their own quiet means.

and with that, the chronicles take son a different turn. one that is less self-absorbed and more observant. i had earlier tried to do that with articles like Settle or Search and Scarecrow. maybe the chronicles should be more about such tales.

so this is just to say that in between fits of self-centered rantings (like this one), the page sof the chronicles will now be open to the narratives of people with whom i am associated, people i care about and their own stories.

it's time to elevate the chronicles to a higher level, to a world in which the peregrine is part of -- a participant, observer and chronicler.