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Two In The Morning

If the streets were safe enough, I’d be taking late night strolls to clear my mind.  As it turns out, I’m living in Manila. Late night strolls really aren’t the best idea.  You never really trust the streets out here, not at this time and hour.  Not to mention the pollution, and, well, the lack of any sort of side walk.

Maybe it’s just me.

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While I’m hypothetically walking down, my mind would probably be filled with dreams and ambitions and regrets and memories  (instead of actually being cleared out).  I guess, one could never really “clear” their mind.  Probably rearrange and organize, but not quite clearing anything.

I can see myself as that — as the sort of person who’d love to take brooding walks, pondering the meaning of life under dim street lights.  I’d probably have my own special spot in the city.  It would be my thinking spot, sort of.  It would be this dreamy secluded place where no one can bother me.  It would be quite the literal comfort zone.

I’m always dreaming of places and spaces I can never be in.  People call me ambitious.  And I guess, I am.  To a certain extent.  I want all those lives lived in books.  I must admit that I usually get jealous of the characters (and I think I’m silly for that).  Sometimes, I drown myself in them so I can live their lives.  Albeit in a different dimension. I’m jealous of how they can just run away, or take late night strolls, or discover special spots, or make so much sense.

While I’m hypothetically walking down, I tug my jacket closer to my body.  I’m thinking of those cigarette fogs — I don’t know what you really call them.  It’s when you breathe or talk, and fog comes out of your mouth with it.  There wouldn’t be any cigarette fogs, though.  I’m just thinking of them, is all.  I’m in Manila after all, it’s never quite that cold.  But, it’s cold enough.  So, I tug my jacket closer to my body, I walk aimlessly.  I kick at a loose chip of concrete, and it lands somewhere (I don’t care where).    I’d breathe deep, and I’d ideally be breathing in the coldness of the night.  In reality all I’d smell would be gas fumes.

I’d probably end up on a friend’s doorstep.  Hypothetically.  But I can’t exactly do that because most of my friends don’t live near me.  They’re all living close together, far away from me.  But, hypothetically.  Ideally.  I’d wake my bestfriend up and there we’d be sitting by the front porch, under the stars, talking about life, at 2 in the morning.

Sweet Escape

I need to get away.  To sunsets, or sunrises.  To brilliant waves crashing, or to murky rivers.  To dreams, to deflated dreams.  To anywhere.

I need to get the fuck away.

I can’t explain.  It’s a great pulsating feeling, this want (or need) to get away. I’m an escapist, and I know it.  They say you can’t escape the inevitable, but I am trying.  I’m fucking trying my goddamn hardest.  I’m freaked out.

Soggy Socks, Wet Trousers

The bed seemed oddly empty.  A fragment of my consciousness reaches hard enough to take a peek.  3:00 AM.  It’s definitely too early for anything.  So, I slip back.

I wake up, feeling like it’s just seconds later, at 5:00AM. I remember my phone vibrating while a medley of farm animals screech at me.  It takes brutality to wake me up (Brutality, and probably more).  I’ve been praised for my talent in bed (My talent of sleep, I’ve mastered it.  I think.)

It doesn’t seem like it, though.  The time, I mean.  Everything is eerily silent; like the world is still blanketed (Deep in slumber).  I’m trying my hardest to convince myself that the clocks are right, and it indeed is 5 AM and not the 3:30AM the darkness implies.  In fact, it’s 10 minutes after.  Hurriedly (or not so much), I go about my morning routine distorted slightly by my displacement.

The rain shakes the world violently with spurs of droplets.  Or at least, in this part of town.  I’m mumbling under my breath as I make my way through the labyrinth of Manila.  An hour and a half of travel fills my mind with swirling thoughts of life, love and lust.  Right.  I’m just kidding (please delete love and lust).  I make my way, my mind still frenzied by time-induced notions.  I’m going up pink and blue MMDA overpasses,  I’m climbing up the stairs.  I’m free-falling.  The idea of being so high up the ground nauseates me.  I’m free-falling.  I’m climbing down the stairs, and I’m half-running towards the jeepneys.

I feel the wet ground pull my foot backwards, like a suction cup in a toilet bowl.  In my hurry, I leave my slipper behind.  I laugh at the ridiculousness of everything.  I drown in embarrassment, but not so much. I walk the three paces back to my lone slipper, half-barefoot.  The people behind me laugh along (laugh at).  And the moment is over.

I go through the day in a hurry, praying for time to speed up.  I wasn’t feeling well, but I know it was psychological.  I attended my professor’s earlier class and I arrive home two hours earlier.

Now.

All the sad songs are blaring through my speakers like a constant bout of reminders.  I’m here again, in front of the laptop.  It almost feels like a chore, this sort of repetition (or routine, or ritual).  With it, the rain continues on pounding rather hardly and tunelessly upon lonely rooftops. The darkness of the night binds everything and I can’t help but bask in its familiarity (the familiarity of darkness, of wetness). There’s always something comforting about sad songs and the rain. It would have been quite the melancholic night if I had a reason to be melancholic. I would have been crying buckets — it seems just the perfect time for it. Had it been under different circumstances. My mind is making up sad and beautiful stories of love lost and love regained. I’m thinking of all the possible scenarios that could be happening right now, in a completely different dimension. Or location, at least. I’m thinking people kissing under the rain. I’m thinking arguments. I’m thinking car crashes. I’m thinking… I’m thinking of all the lives that aren’t mine. Thing is, my life is at a blank. It has reached this point where all I am are reports and exams. No in-betweens, no go-beyonds. I’m just stuck, apparently. I’m not hovering on any thin line dividing wrong or right; fantastic or mediocre. There’s absolutely no drama involved; like life itself had been stripped of life. It’s just ironic, I guess.

I just want a reason to cry.  Or laugh.  Or go wild.  Everything just seems so annoyingly pleasant to the point of mediocrity.  It’s like I’m still waiting for something big to happen. The terrible thing is, I’m paying so much attention. I’m afraid that the moment has passed me by. I’m afraid that the moment will pass me by.

Metaphoric Lines and Mediocre Times

For the most part, I think I enjoyed the Geography Camp in Zambales. Going there was a rush of nostalgia as we passed by Subic. Subic used to my safe place; it used to be something so familiar. It used to be a tradition for a while, to go there every summer. Memories clenched at my heart as if it were yesterday. I’m still yearning for things to go back to the way they were. There’s no hope in that, obviously. Sometimes, tradition has to stop to give way for more practical things. I’m just sad, is all. Sad and nostalgic.

What I’m going to tell you is, the trip was unexpectedly more philosophical (for me). I guess there’s just something about the calming sound of waves.

There are so many things I’d like to say. I want to expound on the sun’s elegance. I want to be profound about how the sand stands for some greater meaning in life. I want to write metaphoric lines about the salty air. There are just so many things I’d like to say. Thing is though, I feel like they’re better left unsaid. Some posts, I guess, are better left as drafts forever. That’s what I realized.

The Fear

It was barely the crack of dawn and I felt like I just dozed off.  I was in an organized rush, trying to leave the house before 5:30.  Everything falls into place that way; nobody’s late.  I was speeding out the driveway, then suddenly I was on the platform.  Once the train arrived, I hurriedly found a seat and took out my homework.  I had a 5 day weekend to do it, but there I was cramming to the last minute — inside the MRT.  I can’t make anything out of the problem since I was absent the last time.  Stupid alarm clocks.  What I did was, I scribble down half-assed answers that suddenly jumped at me; ideas brewed in the MRT.  What’s even lamer is, I don’t have any notes.  I don’t exactly have notebooks.  It doesn’t end there.  I forgot to bring pens.  Pens!  Anyway, it was a lame attempt at schoolwork, but at least I passed. Barely.

I’m now everything I fear to be.  I’m now the person who comes to school unprepared.  I’m now the sort of person who comes to school without a pen, without notebooks.  I’m now the type who comes to school with undone homework.  Unless you count in scribbled, half-assed answers brewed while riding the MRT, then you can call me completely irresponsible.  I’m the proverbial sloth I used to detest so mcuh back in high school.  I don’t know when this happened to me exactly.  I don’t know what happened to get me here.  But it did.  It happened. I’m here.

High school ruined me.

I’ve been denying myself this fact for months.  It has occured to me countless times, but I knew better than to acknowledge it.  After all, who would think that such an innocent (okay, maybe not completely innocent) and happy time of my life could be twisted into something that’s entirely the opposite?  With all the things people (or a certain person) have said and done after everything (I’ve accomplished, I guess), I just can’t find the heart to continue on with whatever passion I had before.  The fire is waning; maybe not fully extinguised as of now, but it’s getting there.  It’s definitely getting there.  Or maybe I’m just deluding myself so I can say I have reason.  I can never really be sure.

And maybe it’s not all too horrible.  Maybe I was never really cut out to be the good girl.  Well, not entirely since I don’t exactly drink, do drugs, smoke or have one night stands.  What can I say?  I’m reduced to a big lump of boredom whose excitement stems from procrasination and jeepney rides chased by police cars.  I’m not all that interesting, anymore.

I must admit, I never prophesied myself to be this kind of person. Quite the contrary, actually.  I used to always dream of big cities and different cultures. I always dreamed of Harvard or Oxford, or somewhere Down Under.  I’ll clue you in:  it was never really all about UP.  I dreamed of Boston, or Seattle, or New York.  I dreamed of London, or Paris, or Spain.  Not Manila.  Not exactly.  Anywhere but here, it seems.  It may sound unpatriotic, but that’s just how it is.  Well, I guess I at least have Seattle; it’s where I live after all.  I, at least, have that reduced form of my dream with Boston parallel to our own street, Manhattan just around the corner and New York Street at the end of it.  Living here is like a funny reminder of all my dead dreams.  Or are they just dreams in a coma?  I don’t know yet.  As of now, it’s all just a living contradiction of fantasies meant strictly for the mind.  But maybe it is partly my fault for being continuously lazy.  I’ve never had the initiative to look for scholarships, or grants, or sponsors — we definitely wouldn’t be able to afford my dreams without those.  But then, I defend myself and say, it’s just not that.  I think the moment I passed the UPCAT, I was immediately tied down by overwhelming expectations from relatives, an overwashing relief from my parents for relatively cheaper tuition, and an obligation to a great grandmother (and a great grandfather, albeit indirectly).  They say I always have a choice, but everything is compromising.  My fate was practically sealed.  It’s all a dizzying spell of restrictions and obligations, and the high school experience that ruined me.

Someday, I’ll write here again and I’ll clue you in if all these are just dead fantasies or the real deal.

After College

One of the strangest things happened today.  For me at least.  Out of my own free will, I went to the library because I had nothing to do.  You know, the library –  the place no one really goes to.  The place filled with old books and snotty old people.  It may sound ironic that I love books yet it frightens me so  (okay, so maybe frightens is quite exaggerated) to step into a place filled with them.  I’m not quite fond of politics though, and that’s where I’m at — in the Social Sciences Section of the library.  I don’t find it appealing.  Not really.  I just needed a place to stay.  It’s not much fun when your ordinarily three hour break suddenly stretches to four and a half.  But, what I do love is the smell of books, and the feel of them.  So, the library can actually be a pretty awesome place to stay at.

Anyway, being in a building full of books made me think about… well, books.  The thing about them is, they can bring you anywhere — real or otherwise.  Books can let you be anyone.  Books are elastic.  With books, we can be elastic.

I was reading this book the other day, it was about a girl with amnesia.  Three years of memories have been wiped out.  I practically finished the book after a couple of hours — it’s really nothing heavy.  I’d call it one of my pleasure (in the most innocent sense, mind you) books. So anyway, after reading I drifted to sleep.  The next thing I know is I’m awake and I don’t remember a thing.  I was so disoriented.  Also, there was this story about a mute and what happened was, I didn’t speak the whole day.  I guess I get too attached to the characters.

There was also this one time, while reading Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, when I had the sudden urge to run away.  It’s not like I’m extremely problematic, and I don’t think I’m really the type.  Because there are types, you know.  And so, I didn’t.  I didn’t run away, and that didn’t repress the feeling.  I just had to get away, I don’t really know why.  For the first time in months I was willing to leave home without much attachedness.  I needed to go to Seattle.  I guess it’s sort of symbolic — symbolically running away.  I also had this sudden need to put up a private library.  Like, I’d let people I don’t know — strangers — borrow my books for in house reading.  Not that I have so much books.  And of course, I wouldn’t do it at home.  I’d probably have security issues — not that I’m any important person though.  I talked to mom about this, since we have this space for rent and the current client was about to leave.  I asked if I could please, please put up a library.  I said it would be magical.  There’d be coffee served, and I could even learn how to do all those jazzy stuff.  I’d even serve those things I bake, cakes and cookies and stuff.  I’d do this so the library would be self-sustaining.  It was a brilliant plan and my heart was beating erratically out of excitement.  I said, I was gonna paint the place a classic black or a cozy dirty white or something.  There’d be bean bags and a comfy sofa, and some other cool chairs.  It was gonna be fucking amazing.  In my mind, it was.  There’d be some artsy people coming in, and we’d talk some.  There’d be non-artsy people as well, because it doesn’t really matter if you’re artsy or not.  What matters is you love books, and you like a good cuppa coffee.  I’d probably also put up a few of my bag designs, and it’s gonna ba amazing.  I swear.  In my mind it is.

But my mom said no.  She said, “After college.”  Like life starts right after that.  Like when I was in high school and I asked for stuff and she’d say “After high school.”  Now’s never the right time, apparently.  I argued of course.  I said no, it’s not gonna be like that.  It’s not even business.  It’s a self-sustaining library.  It’s who I am: books, coffee, comfort, design, coziness, cookies.  She said I’d fall in love with it too much, and never go back to college.  So, she repeated, “After college.”

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Originally written on a scratch paper, 30 July 2009