The Closing of August*

A writer struggles to get back into writing a decent piece.

I first head of this song during my daughter's Parent's Freshman Orietation.  I thought it was a gospel song.  Oh boy, was I so helpless  tryin to record it on my phone.  Of course, I was unsuccessful.  Dang!

Then Gary V and Sarah  G @ The Voice Philippines.  I prefer this song done in a really sweet, gentle tone. Like, a lullabye that rocks you to slumber.    That cover wasn't really my bet but was I glad the song was brought to my attention again.  Found it finally.

Lyrical poetry.  Twas a Zedd original.  But two of my favorite versions, one with vocals curt'sy of Marie Digby , the other, violin by Daniel Jang --- vocals mine :).  Like, I sing over those strings.  Who knows,  on lazy days like this, I'd learn to record a song.  Did I say, I am a chameleon.  I can also turn myself into a bird from time to time hehe .... and if you compare me to Digby girl ... I don't care! haha



My last one was April.  Coming back from celebrating my 43rd summer in my little hometown.  Re-groupin' rekindlin' with Dognuts and some high school friends.  And the failed endeavor to get drunk in the streets of Gapo or cry and scream our hearts and lungs out in Kale beach.  There was sobriety instead.    Oh man, ain't we back to being decent 43/44 year old kids!  So whatever happened to that plan to get wasted, huh!  For once, in midlife, let's get delinquent! :)

I'm always a fan of "free verse".  Putting words together just like that.  Plus I am not really  a "rhyme" person.  I don't like following trends or formats.  It restricts my artistry.  To me it's always been like throwing all those colors in a wall, and finding meaning in it.  I fancy words.  But now I can see, I'm into something like haiku.  Going back to the last 4 of my works at Blender. Short, big words.  Ones that pierce your soul.  Words like that so powerful they make you cry.    

And Digby  flashbacks.  Back in my hotel room in Marco Polo Davao.  I heard her doing acoustics on a something fast from Rihanna.   I dunno what's happening.  An (about to be) scorned woman's instinct.  A conscience' fair warning.  Out in the streets they were partying.  I got my life falling part.  A few days after, it all went down.  My plane crashed and I died.  Like I died a hundred deaths with you.  Was that August?    

 Just this song.  Eased me back to waxing poetry.  Or was it because it is August again.  Remembering August.  Leaving August.  I owe it to this song.

"Loving. You. I know I'm good at it.   But I'm better.   Doing it alone.  Loving you."



The block's unblocked!  I'm back to writing!  Good grief!



*a poem written by Laura Marie
"Heaven casting its glow
across the shadows of insincerity- ..."

Getting a grip ...

... for this can't wait ...   Big big very big THANKS to everyone for checkin' on me and my daughter, Sophie. Flood water was chest deep just outside our gate but we were spared. Water supply was disrupted, but power up, and above all internet redundant ;) ... mother and child pig-outs, mall rats, and selfies.

back to androids and touch screens.  Ok, will try to viber with my California gurls ...  Excuse me for my French again (me, pawtin' ...) ... my learning curve with technology is Mt. Fuji haha so please ...

still my favorite man.  

go get Kidston!

I'll ask na lang Sophie to teach/operate for me.  I'm a lazy student lol.

... much have been said ... wednesday ...  i  braved the storm and got my new post paid line (my first one I gave to my daughter as soon as she got into college ... oh sweet sunshine ...) 

... so now, you can personalize nos. ha.  Peter, the cordinal and very accommodating sales staff, was getting demanding ... and impatient with my indecision ...  but that actually caught me by surprise, suddenly I needed 6 digits ... I wasn't ready ... and the queue was getting longer, and the lady who started friendly was now smirking and throwin' me dagger looks.  Top of the head, inside my head, running around in circles, chasing pavement cracks ...

09258xxxxxx

the first five was system generated.
the last six digits.  was somebody's birthday.
his.

(andameng statiscal probabilities, but i came up with that combination, and am stickin' with it :) )

love's still.

through rose colored glasses ...

 I used to make a list, some  long, some short, but very meaningful to me.  The storm came.  I stopped.  My shame.  It was my parade, and the rain ruined it!   I ignored all the blessings that poured in.  I had bragging rights.  I chose to be quiet.  Bad quiet.  This is the calm now.  I’m going back.  This is my no. 1. J 

  

       1)  2^nd long weekend for the month --- and i am hell bent to enjoy Satruday, Sunday and Monday with            my daughter!

     2)   My internet’s all up!  Great!  Above all my daughter's getting wifi-wasted all weekend LOL

     3)   The whole week I was online with my BFFs Arlene, Lucy and Athan.  I miss my friends arrgghhh.                  Ronnie’s coming home this October  ‘niweyz!

     4)  Such a feat! ... The GI Experience™, that ‘s our branding, that’s my Marketing Plan ;) … And                     “Priceless” Loyalty Program getting a makeover.  Weekend sales lookin' good, too. :)

      5)  Still in the running …  Bengbeng texted me with high hopes :)

      6)  Sophie’s Prelim exams out … let’s just say, a big huge large gargantuan humongous room for                        improvement LOL

       7) She got me a banana cake (1^st day, she forgot all about it at Anna’s arrgghgh)

         8)  I got me an Elianto pedicure, in this year's lucky color  ---- gareeeeeeennnn babeeee

         9)  Hope thrives!

         10)  Rain, rain, rain and plenty of rain!!!!

        10)  I was telling Ednei, it made me smile, made me nervous, that's all.  Love's still.  I'm steady.

Posthumously

Twas Franco’s last day in PI.  The next day he would be catching the “flight” of his life.  My baby cousz’ serious and firm attempt to spread his wings, to a place so foreign, to a timing that was perfect although a little late.  But this is not about Franco. Although it's also about "leavings" and the passing of time.

So I decided to call in sick in that Thursday morning.  Dropped off Sophie to school.  Dropped our Caroline to our village.  Got dressed up comfy.  We hit the road, the five of us.  Tita, Codie, myself, and Carrots’ boys.  On the road, there was tinge of guilt in her voice, may be regret, may be pity … it’s been a year.

Like that caught me speechless.  My eyes bulged like they were trying to get some clarity for answers.  She was a little vague .  Was it Kuya Epi?  Nah, it was the youngest (and cutest) hayyyy.  Si Ogie nga.

Kalaro.  Kababata.  It was actually pavementless J … so typical of small countryside neighborhoods.  Back then, the streets were covered by fresh green wild grasses, rows of small guava and tamarind trees, bushes of santan flowers, and yes, I remember pink dandelions, too.  Where houses looked like expensive big mansions to  5 and  8 year old kids. Yeah, did we ran those hills like a bunch of crazies LOL.  Naiinis ako kasi lagi na lang ako ang taya.  Nobody like to pair with me,  not even my cousins, my own blood. Lampa daw kasi ako tsaka mabagal tumakbo, kaya pampatalo J  

He was a naughly little boy, we’d play hide and seek, and he would bring me to his dad’s workshop at the back of their bungalow.  We’d hide to that stinky place where they kept their “pet” turkeys .  (so I think about it now, I didn’t know anyone in my lifetime, who would domesticate turkeys LOL, may be for fun or for food).  Live turkeys they’s just as bad as live ostriches … they go wild at the sight of you, and would run in amuck at us, after me (so I thought)  … and may be try to make food out of a 5-year old little girl who just couldn’t run decently.  I was so scared like hell, I always ended up ruining the game, because I always came out from my “hidings” crying like I was raped by those damned nasty monsters.                                                                       

Then we moved.  And I spent the rest of my childhood in Gapo.  Lovely memories I also made up north.  Gapo got me at hello.  I forgot about Tanza. Brgy. Kwatro.  Those freaking turkey creatures!  And Ogie.

Then the first wedding in the family.  She stayed longer in Tanza.  Sila ang naiwan.  Her entire childhood spent in our little hometown.  A concoction of happy, said, painful memories.   That explains her attachment.  Rosemarie.

Aling Ulot (my mom’s kumare) was one of the sponsors.  He drove for her that day.  My mom was one of the sponsors, too, in absentia.  I was her rep.  And such a bad rep at that.

I was torn  between two loves.  It was something not easy for me.  I lost a lot of weight, my hair was short and dry.  My face was pale.  I was tired from the long trip from Gapo to Kawit.  I had to pull myself up from bed, refused to dress up to the nines (at least wear a good disposition, good enough for a wedding).  I was a lifeless wedding guest that rainy morning.  July 1992.  

Lo and behold!   Ogie The Pogi living up to his childhood monicker (which he learned to despise as he approached his adult life, so he said J ).

Metropolitan Manila was big dirty city which lacks good moral and right conduct.  I thought it would be such a challenge for a typical probinsyana to keep up with competition in a larger, more sophisticated cosmopolitan corporate jungle.   So I decided to go back to what was “comfort zone” to me. People closer to me, know that, it was just an excuse.  I was trying to be clever.  I knew my family especially my mom and my closest of kin, knew it.  But I didn’t care.  I had a plan , and I was sticking with it.  LOL

So I got bloated with fresh, clean, refrigerated water!  Style ko lang bulok talaga!  I’m writing this episode in my life, and my dirty tricks, I was throwing my head backwards laughing like a drunken fool ahahah

Early 1990s was marked with serious energy problems.  Brown outs to black outs were as normal as having a 3-meal course everyday.   It was a time when going out for a date wasn’t fun at all.  While countryside air was still fresher and bountiful and a lot cheaper.  We used to spend our evenings smoking by their porch discussing start-ups with our careers, his usual Kabintenyo swag  on women and accumulating them like my specie is one his favorite toys and hobbies.  Like me trying to be silent about my own promiscuous ways LOL though not necessarily putting up that “santa santita look” (my inner goddess has always been a tigress jusz about ready to plunge on you and roar!).  If black-outs were longer , we’d go for short road trips, sa Rosario dun sa bahay ng tropa nya (I don’t remember his name, nor his face anymore, I wasn’t interested J ) … We come home after those drives with “worry” and “ suspicion” written all over his mother’s face LOL

Whatever that was between us , we did not explore anymore.   It was an agreement.  Silent and unwritten.  Much had been said about his swag with women.  He had two girlfriends, not much approved by his mother.  What can I say, I was always the girl, preferred by moms.  They smell my strength and weaknesses.   My sincerity and pride, as well.  These mothers they always  regarded me as a perfect catch for their sons.  That was scary. for a young woman of 22, full of dreams and had very miniscule idea of settling down.   

But our families come a long way.  They have been friends even before we  were born.  He to me was a successful test case.  Of someone with a weak self discipline, my faithless self on myself LOL , my earthly human desires that usually win over reasons and GMRC LOL LOL … so there, I came to realize and upheld, things far more important than emotions and physical attraction.

He went on with his harem of two J … I had my first escapades of dating a much younger man.  He couldn’t believe it, my dating preference.  And I was too proud to be just one of his options.  Not then, not now.

I went to a spiral (again).  So I left (again).  Cards dealt separately from then on.  But our families remained friends.  Our decision was wise and upright.

Reden passed away June of last year.  He was 45.  I learned about this just 2 weeks ago. I was spaced out.  I still smile each time I remember his (Kabitenyo) swag.  And proud of us for that conviction to stick it out with that decision.

Buti na lang our families, though now distant,  remained friends.  Buti na lang there was no bad, ugly, painful,  bitter break up between us.  We decided to have “no us”, and keep our childhood memories intact, sacred, pure and innocent.     

I wish you a happy journey in heaven, my dear friend.

You will always be part of my happy memories.

Reden and his girls. :)

Greysteele™: An after Taste

Crawl  into bed, curl up on his side, dressed in his t shirt.  Both his pillow and t shirt smell of him and as I drift off I silently  wish him safe passage home.  Para sa yo.

Grey - --- I love the first one because it was all about beginnings.   Sex is always ecstasy @ preludes (it fares badly as romance does ---  Irmaism --- when love is on the rocks, the rocks are on the bed.  Sad but true.) 
           
Darker ---   Dark is good.  Darker … better.  At least to me, with all the dark, 50 shades “all fucked up" me  ;).  Love setting in but not yet settling down. This is the best part about this intricate fragile intimacy.  When honesty is sincere.  And sincerity, truthful.  When Grey is about sex and all the trimming.  Darker is all about falling in love, the perks and the works, the goods and the bads.  (It’s a feeling I miss, but I’m not getting back to. --- you fall, you get hurt --- I don’t want that anymore.  I think about it sometimes.  Running through my thick impenetrable skull , I tell myself --- I’m happy for the thought that I am committed not to be
reckless anymore.)
                                                            
Freed --- uhmmm what can  I say?    It went somewhere overboard to me.  Both with “too much” sex in it, and that backdrop in Grey’s life of being  hounded (not of his past, for this is understandable, he was a baby, and it was traumatic) … but his “subs” and their cohorts,  and their tremendous obsessions of him and Steele, I find preposterous, to make it politically correct .  But in my own terms, FANTASTIC!  Grey being  America’s most wanted eligible bachelor , I get.  But him being larger than Gates, Zuckerberg  and George Clooney, I don’t get.   This part could have been made realistic by the writer.  Okay the  kinky fuckery kaleidoscopic sex all the time, I can forgive alright :)

I am Katherine Kavanaugh.  If this is the movies, she's an extra, but I feel her.  Obviously , this trilogy was not about her .  I believe, her character deserves more --- somewhere sometime --- EL James could have build up on her.  With all the beauty and kindness of Steele … I find her inner goddess and Kate more intriguing, therefore, interesting.   Steele must be EL James’ alter ego or some kind of fantasy woman.  I dunno, Steele’s character bored me some times. ‘Must say,  James’ gave Grey  very limited options :).  And to me, it’s wasn’t at all about luck for Steele.  It’s about James’ imaginations of an Anastasia Rose Steele. 

I wish Kate made it to that interview. :)

But I am still a sucker for happy endings.  Hope blooms, sez Greysteele™.
(This concept is nothing but a delicious memory to me now.)

Still

My dear Phiayaya's and Rommel's wedding, June 2011.  There's my Dee, all smiles, with my anakish Mykee, a certified camwhore.  :)

Clearly, clearly I remember ...

My sweet Phia's and Omeng's wedding. Each time, it reminds me of ...

My lavander gown was expensive. The makeover session was intricate and expensive, too.  Thanks to Dee and Mommy Rose for taking me in with overwhelming enthusiasm.

Emotions were too much, just too much love going on, coming around ...  

The weather was cloudy.  The streets rippled.  It was going to be stormy ...  yet all of my closest of friends wore the sunniest disposition as I was.  Dee's smile was the sweetest.  Neng's embrace was so assuring.  I was in cloud 9.  It was such a perfect afternoon.  The best time for a wedding.

On my way to the Roldans, I got an overseas text message, telling me how much I’ve been missed. 

***

I was cruising Roxas Blvd. this morning on my way to UP Manila.  Passing by my much loved CITEM over a wide Thursday morning skies.  I remember only beautiful memories.  Just purely happy thoughts … knowing that I’m keeping old friendships, my silent and “star studded” accomplishments and contributions,  a recollection of a successful transition as a small town yuppie steadily moving up the corporate ladder, a suitcase of travelogues.  So I’ve got my name, in rough diamonds, etched in one of those halls.  My inner goddess getting a round of applause from the witches, and bitches and my par excellence ITSED Team.  Peace is so comforting.

I see Golden Shell’s rooftop.  And feel no grudges.  I left as planned  and stayed away on purpose.  Twasn’t a mean feat. It was a milestone considering my steady history of keeping, nurturing, anchoring lifelong relationships with friends their families, classmates, schoolmates, officemates, even exes and their families, too.  May be not the best, all the time, but I’m generally regarded really well, 'must say.  I deserve some credit for that :)

But then again.  I’ve made difficult decisions in life.  Leaving, staying away and keeping it just as that are one of those really hard ones I made ( I really hope I stop making them as options J ). 

Mark, yeah Mark, that Mark ...  was right when he said how hard it was to re-boot me after I shut down.  But what better choice do I have … all files corrupted, the systems gotta go.

Why restore when you can have a new lease on life.

The shut down only hurts in the beginning.  Don’t we all get used to something each time.  It breaks us, but doesn’t kill us.  The pain changes us but we don’t actually die from it.     It only hurts for as long as it hurts.  Then it makes a full stop.  Only God knows when.  But it ends.  I swear to that. 

***

Death is always a first time.

The memories of my dear Phia’s afternoon wedding.  The sleepless, happiest weekend before that.   My intoxication from love.   My reckless imprudence.  The price it cost me.  It wrenched my soul.   My baddest heart break, it was.  My second serving of mean feat.

I still couldn’t help but ask, whatever happened to all that love?

Everyone thought, but they're all wrong ... I'm not saying ... everything inside me is gone.
I have may be some years left.  I'm going down with this.  When everything else is rosy, but this one, I guess, I'm bringing this with me.

I haven’t forgiven myself.   I still hurt.   I love you still.   You just don’t know.

an attempt to overcome my worst writer's block ever

Possibly ...

due to too much positive energy running around my really busy life.

or possibly ...


been  a bit sickly lately :(

or hopelessly ...

too much of this ...

honey

...going around my head these days.  dunno.  three days/three nights of bad dreams.  of you.  of her.   of both of you.  yesterday, i thought i was peacefully asleep on my way home.  suddenly shaken awaken like a tornado did Oklahoma.  that sade song playing.