We hold on to the fleeting present, sparse and amorphous like
Falling, trickling, seeping sand between
the loose fingers of consciousness
Losing, sublimating into the ether of memory, the forgotten
Lint of a weathered past

We fear frail indistinct fragments, cracked, crackled, coarse, cluttered
The tip-tapping, tick-tocking, clink-clanking hush of haunting
Muddled filaments lined with meaning that refuses
To disentangle from the macramé of recollections

Surly esoteric moments that used to
Move and meander our reality
Now miniscule footnotes buttressed against the weight of past
Lovers, lives, learning, longing

So we seek permanence, to deny our mortality
We write, and build, and think, and express
Creating manifestations that reflect
an imagined distinction, delicate translations
Borne of a hunger for acknowledgement, admission,
and acceptance as contrarian

But man’s immortality lies upon the intangible
For objects, like man, weathers, withers, wilts, and is wanting
It is in the seed we plant among our brothers,
Bits of ourselves broken apart, shared, imbibed, dissolved, ingested

Parts of our parts, becoming parts of theirs
Enriching, enlightening, educating,
Forming, deforming, informing
In that hope that when we pass, we surpass

Not in tangible, impermeable, impenetrable objects detached
From the flesh of our being, the nectar of our psyche;
But as missed, unforgotten advocates of humanity
Adding to the richness of culture and society, as our predecessors have.

[A blitzkrieg-exercise done in observance of All Soul's Day, this was written within the span of 15 minutes, a rather mundane attempt of encapsulating the immediacy and fleeting nature of memory, and the overwhelming recidivist effects of grief. May we all never forget, and never be forgotten.]

Original image from here.

A subtle change is happening. I feel it most during those incoherent hours between sleep and wakefulness, vast and vacuous moments of apathy to the world that pepper and interject my days, and sometimes nights. They mingle and trickle beneath the seemingly bland normalcy (if, one could imprecisely classify it as such). It may be a harbinger of something more pervasive, invasive and assertive that has yet to find fruition. So far, this paradigm shift is neither malevolent nor malignant, at least to my knowledge.

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To achieve the impossible, you must believe it's possible.


- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Charles Kingsleigh
Alice in Wonderland
March 2010, Walt Disney Pictures

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“We cannot live alone. As much as it pains us to be together, we can’t be alone.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - David Foster Wallace

I admit that I lack the necessary social and interpersonal skills to be considered endearing, nor the appropriate rapport requisite for amiableness, nor the levity to be deemed approachable. I concede that most of the competencies detrimental to being a sociable and socially-effective human being, I do not possess, and these are the specifics one cannot feign. To approximately place it, I have a societal retardation akin to a fish on dry land. The things that I do possess, or have an acceptable grasp of – logic, information, language, have little bearing on the dynamics of relating to other human beings.

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Livid lungs lusting lucidly

an airy ascendant antithetical aspiration,

the tired trajectory of this travesty

weakened, weary and worrisome.

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6:48 PM A stroll at the Ayala Triangle Gardens.

It was the same decades-old sidewalk, paved in worn concrete; the same indistinct skyline glittered in its fluorescent fury; the same stillness of a transient city. It was, in many ways, omnipresent, unequivocal and perseverant. But, there was a sensation of astral interjection, a weightless freefall that unnerved, and I could not dispense the imbalance of my own senses.

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There is serenity in waiting. How solitude lulls the passing of time, of feeling, of longing. It's not conceding, but rather accepting. That syzygy can happen, when we leave fate to do her weaving. That by releasing our wishes to the winds like a Zoroastrian effigy, we let go of the burden, and discomfort that deciding prescribes. Because certain things are intangible, inexact and ambiguous that to try to grasp it would be like holding sand in your palms.

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I am a clean slate.

A blank canvass to the inspired painter. Whose gestures with the worn brush distill emotion into imagery, sentiment into sentient scenery. His strokes define and expound on affections, from the minutest of nuances, to the expanse of my skin. He will draw upon his own actions to discover the curvature of my consciousness. And I will be his willing plate, for the feast of his senses.

I come to him pristine and birthed, from a frugality of experience and the washed out ebbing of my beating chest. He will weave his stories through my stretched linen plateaus, from the Indian ink he drips, to the vivid colors he conjures. He will awaken me to his touch, and I by my eyes.

And I will be his masterpiece, and he will be mine.



Image from here.

In this world where distance is slowly being dwarfed by information, and cultures diluted by dissemination, our cognizance of identity is becoming less endemic and more assimilative. Like lofty mists sublimating into the summer dawn, we lose ourselves into the frivolity of existence. Of merely sufficing to be, rather than to become, easily falling prey to the heed of collective hysterics than to define one’s own valuations. In this horrid and hurried renaissance of progressive obsession, truth is a filament flexibly weaved. And our truth, despite the myriad combinatorics of being, often is skewed by the consciousness we inhabit.

So I seek to return to the primordial, to re-commune with the earth that birthed me. From whose bountiful loins I am made and of, and into its chasms I must cast my deepest disappointments, like Zoroastrian effigies into the dusk of defiance. And by its gaping abyss I seek oblivion. That grail of the heart that stills the agitated, and contains the overwhelmed. The gift of release.

Tonight I shall kiss the earth. And ask to be healed.



Image from here.

I am the wind. Effervescent mists,
that crawl and creep.
Awaiting summer’s heat.
Calm at night.
Still at daylight.

I am the earth. Older than humanity,
and his frivolous extants.
Grounded and steadfast.
Birthing molten pain at fall.
Fiery and nurturing.

I am the water. Fluid and graceful.
My cup runneth over with a quenching bounty.
Taking all imaginable forms,
yet amorphous at heart.
Instilling spring with its myriad shades.

I am the fire. Brazen and unbounded.
Devouring the plains with an avarice unseen.
Burning all that touch my embers,
scorching across a frigid winter night.
Playful and vengeful.

I am elemental and I am man.
I am he, who cannot be tamed, will not be broken.
I am parts of a whole, but never its part.
By turning of tides, and the beating heart.
Beyond the details, and across time.

I am everything, and none at all.



Image from here.

Semblances of an imagined future.
Transcendant, fleeting, uncompromising against reality.
Filigreed filaments of a frail borrowed memory, elastic and amorphous.
Shifting into emotion, pregnant from our thoughts.
Fed by a hope, bare and irrational.

Absurd visions of a utopian life.
Of an existence complete, realized, actualized.
The Machiavellian deduction of an emotional delusion.
Affording direction, will, capacity for resilience.

Distillations of our heart’s yearnings.
Its very madness, the only harness maintaining our sanities.



Image from here.

Dearest Apprentice:


You must learn.
That interest is non sequitur to affinity,
nor adulation, affection,
nor congruence, compatibility,
nor appreciation, attraction.

Chemistry is complicated in
that its expressions do not always
reach equilibrium.

And when they do, it is in lieu
of a catalyst unforeseen,
and when they don't, due to
human error, no less.

Learn, to test your hypotheses.


Reminding,
The Mentor

Image from here.

Drawing first blood hurts the most. Only by the pain of the initial drip will one be able to transcend the superficiality of the process and afford a comprehension of its context. It is oft said that the healing process begins with acknowledging the pain, yet this offers little guidance in achieving recovery. Truth is, we must trudge our own paths of healing; regardless of the source and reason of distress, and the depth and period of mourning.

Perhaps the most unbearable of sorrows, even more than the palpable physical injury or the loss of a loved one, is the grief that cascades in the loss of oneself. Depression has many names, and even more varied symptoms, and it is fairly typical and quite innocuous for one to pass valuation on the apparent banality of another's depression. Depressed? Maybe I am, or maybe I'm almost. Either way, I cannot deny the poignancy of my existence from a sense of loss of who I once was. Change is imminent, and let this channel be a witness to the struggle I must pursue. Moreso than finding myself, but to define who I am. Beyond the obvious and mundane, behind the walls of preposterous theatrics, beneath the stern competitiveness.

So here I am. Decidedly initiating a process whose eventual conclusion I will never foresee. Left only with the caviar of faith I can muster, and the courage I can feign; to ensue an unraveling of memories, and the facing of personal demons; in the hopes of learning lessons I failed to realize then, and finding solace in my own reflections. I do pray that my readers be as patient and amiable to my prose as they are to me.



As blood curdles every passing moment, when coagulants engage in a frantic daze to prevent further loss, in the brief period when the sting of our lifeline drains from a cut, transformation occurs. The hemoglobin in the blood oxidizes from being in contact with the free oxygen molecules in air, turning color from the intense ruby to the dull tar, from the thick viscose consistency to rubbery remnants of the letting. When our very lifeline is spoiled, from being the elixir of our veins, to the lowly stain on a shirt. That is when descension is complete.

Red is the new black.