"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."

- Closing Time (Semisonic, Feeling Strangely Fine, 1998)




"Hit me baby, one more time."

- ...Baby One More Time (Britney Spears, Baby One More Time, 1998)

Hello Aya,


"Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife."
- Franz Schubert

Forgive my inaniloquence, as this wonderful news have come at such a surprise. Your nudiustertian decision is well appreciated, and has left me nothing but aghast at this elating development. The years have been unkind to those of the intelligensia, and discontent plagues our plight with the persistence of a keloidal scar, but that shouldn't deter us from seeking that elusive love. Serendipity is kind to those whom fate have been harsh to. I am glad you've found yours, from this immense sea of strangers, at a foreign land no less. 

Allow me to express my heartfelt well wishes for the both of you. Nothing of value comes in this life without effort, and struggle. The struggle informs this value, makes the honey sweeter, the journey greater, and the and the sun a tad more warmer (and kinder). Maybe some day I will get to meet this man. May you bring joy and support, love and understanding, and above all trust and respect to each other. 

We must find happiness where we can. It is the only noble way to love.


Les deseo a ambos todo lo mejor en su compromiso y para el futuro!

Salud!
Red

To write seems futile, incomplete, unintelligible
thoughts that refuse to find voice, form, a message
scarcely scribbled, quickly discarded, drafted
in the silence of an ordeal 

unspoken.

There is comfort in indecision.

 Realizing, I am human after all.

Words fail, when the heart sprints incessantly

Falling upon deaf ears, for that question unanswered

Maybe in a forlorn reality thrown into the chasm of life

I hold a morsel, remaining untouched, unconsumed.

But for now I am a footnote, those disparate minutiae

Informative, but utterly irrelevant, meaningless in this moment

Yet in this barren conduit, find comfort in the faceless crowd

You might find me, here, where I have always been

all this time.

The sun to my fragile leaves;

dancing midday in whispered heaves,

tangled between each other’s’ steps

supple lines, swiftly caressed.

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A deadline met. Bills paid in advance. Lunch-out with colleagues. A successful introductory meeting with clients. A logbook finally signed. Spending time with le partenaire de mes rêves.  New friendships. An unexpected gift. Renewed ties. An honored introduction. Post-Christmas festive mood. Makati City after work hours. The unplanned stroll at the beloved park. Cold milk tea on a warm December night.  

It has been (and continues to be) such a wonderful year. Here's to an even more wonderful one ahead. 

Bonne Année, et à votre santé!

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Underneath the Atlas of immediate expectations,
Of pending papers, incumbent examinations,
Bearing and bursting tattered seams of discipline,
Tick-tocking verily, a veritable exhaustive end.

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ephemeral, adj.
I was coming back from the bathroom. You had just checked your email. I was walking to bed, but you intercepted me, kissed me, then clasped my left hand in your right hand and put your left hand on my back. We started slow-dancing. No music, just nighttime. You leaned your head into mine and I leaned my head into yours. Dancing cheek to cheek. Revolving slowly, eyes closed, heartbeat measure, nature’s hum. It lasted the length of an old song, and then we stopped, kissed, and the world resumed. 

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p. 84 of The Lover’s Dictionary (A Novel) by David Levithan. 2011, Picador. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. NY.

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I do not miss you.

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"You are my homecoming. When I'm with you and we're well together, there is nothing more that I want. You make me like who I am, who I become when you're with me, Oliver. If there's any truth in the world, it lies when I'm with you..."
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Elio, as spoken to Oliver

Call Me by Your Name, by André Aciman
2007 Picador ® Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

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I imagine your smell when I write to you. And you imagine I'm with you when you read them. Our letters are part of us now. Part of our history. A reminder that we made it through this time. Together.
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Dr. Paul Flanner
Nights at Rodanthe
2008 Warner Bros. Pictures

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I gasped. The distinctly familiar scent of cum and sweat permeates the room like a bookmark wedged between pages of the space, highlighting the obvious remnants of what has just transpired. The singular lamp illuminating the sala seems to cast its light upon the soiled leather couch that buttresses the windows, as if gesturing to the exact spot where it had happened.

The sight of a half-naked male emerging from the shower came as no surprise. His hair was moist, while his torso glistened from his hurried bath. I paused to survey him. He is a stranger.

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Dearest Froyo Hagens,

You are. 

The fire that ignited warmth into my frigid existence, whose saccharine kisses caressed and calmed the delirious tundra of my pain and angst. The flame that altered the effigy of haunting histories into a bonfire of comfort, homely and welcoming. A sanctum in the thickness of the black forest, that beaming beacon to my raft's berthing shore. 

Invigorating. 

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For her you were something different from who you were for me, you were part of yourself, not only of her body but also of her soul, of her identity as a woman. Of course you were my child too, I didn’t doubt that, but you were not that with the same absolute uncertainty as the fact that you were her child. That a child also has a father is a quite late discovery.

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The Procedure by Harry Mulisch1998, 2001 Translated from Dutch by Paul Vincent, Penguin Putnam Inc.

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Click image for full view

I wish I was less arrogant
more receptive,
more considerate;
that there are other ways
besides
the methods I employ.

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Sometimes, when someone's worth it, you just have to put yourself out there.
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Susan Heffley
Diary of a Wimpy Kid
April 2010, Color Force

It is elusive. If it weren’t, its value would not be as vast. But often, because of failed histories, and antagonistic anxieties, we choose to put up walls to protect our hearts. Creating citadels of indifference, with the nuances of detachment, defensiveness and defeatism; we become beacons of our own banishment. Creating cocoons out of cobwebs, of mangling memories meant to be mended.

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In response to end of days.

Continued from apocalypsis I.

So I sat beside him.

Having no impulsion to assert my presence, I made do with just the act of being near him, with him. When mere millimeters of space defined our gap, it felt like he was in a place so distant, and removed from this, from here, from now. I wanted to be in that place, in his mind. To reside in the expanse of his ideas that seemed to consume his eyes. But here I was, a stuttering fool, without even the decency to ask for the permission of sitting beside him.

His mug lay empty nearby. A necessary detail that remained unnoticed. Well, nothing to lose. So I took the mug. In any case, I’m getting my own cup anyway. And seeing how he’s so engrossed in his book, it would be sacrilegious to ask or even point it out. With our mugs in tow, I went down to find the line at the counter deserted. Looks like sizygy does happen in real life. I hurried back upstairs to that outdoor balcony to find him holding my book at the page where I left it, and him continually reading his own tome. Like a choreographed dance, I reached out my hand to retrieve my book from him, while offering the freshly filled mug with the other. He looked up, reached out for his caffeine, and smiled.

Such a sweet, sweet smile.

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In response to end of days.

It was a Saturday.

And like most Saturdays, I found my weary feet dragging my tired soul into that respite of intellect and entertainment that affords me to suspend my cumbersome realities, the bookstore. In its hallowed halls and scarred stacks I seek the sanctum sanctorum of my imagination. In the tomes of geniuses past and present I achieve the impossible. The unbelievable. The unfathomable. There, where the world ceases its hurried revolutions, and time is but a memory of little efficacy, I bury my thoughts, purge my emotions, and divulge my mind.

Once again, the fiction section found me lost in volumes of worlds achievable, and dreams plausible. Unlike most Saturdays though, I found myself in the company of another whose preoccupation with the absurd and fantastic threatens to rival my own. The memory of that afternoon eludes me now, shifty and effervescent in the annals of my narrative. All I could muster to reclaim are the innocuous details that swayed my attention. His brisk confident walk, the gait that betrays his stature, and the precarious method he held his cigarette.

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A single yes, is equivalent to a thousand no's.

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Bianca Oliganza
on Boys' Night Out, Magic 89.9

Image from here.

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