nameless comes nightly

photo by alexander young

thirty-five of you,

i’ve seen come nightly

i’d lean over to feel you

and fail,

the hands, not mine,

move constantly away

choosing to chase uncertainty.

you wear the frequent, nameless gloom

long before i step outside to hail you

are you loneliness?

you shy away from an answer, looking stern, unscathed.

i go on filling you with words,

the wind goes on taking them all away

and with liberty--

but are you loneliness?

orange, yellow, gray, pitch-black almost

at the back of my head i’m guessing.

i look up from my fiction, there i see you again

the one from last night but never acting the same

steal another night or so from my children

i tucked them tight and tender

so move the way you do—catlike and deep in poetry

so no one hears you- -loneliness?

some nights i meet you so quietly

though you bring the same glow

here, and where my eyes can’t see.

no you don’t scare, you don’t.

you bring nameless gloom, i always say

come, let me look at that face you’re wearing tonight

for if loneliness, it’s you again,

i ask that you don’t come tomorrow night

and hide in the name moonlight.

moon, poetry, penthouse view, cypress towers, ants, mystery

clementine: story of a sunset

the veranda is cloaked with the day’s last rays of the sun. clementine leaned on the baluster feeling the dolour slowly creeping in. she closed her eyes listening, waiting for a sound from the empty road across the 30-year old bungalow where she stood, telling herself to stop counting the hours. it’s silent. the house stands at the far end of the road, its facade boasting of senescent beauty. it is no home to her but a refuge from years of mislaid youth. it’s where she embraced age and began to understand that happiness does not always present itself as an ally. most of the time, clementine even failed to understand what it stood for. happiness, like love, would come and leave at every command of the earth.

the sun behests everything it touches. plants bow down to kiss the ground when the sun starts to hide, and people become leaden near dusk. nothing and no one is spared. i would like to know though, how it would be like to be free. but be free from what? my despair is unknown. it has no name, no face. it has been there ever since i can remember. it’s like a story where everything is the same even after the hundredth time you read it. how you begin it or how you end it is how you want it to be. but what happens in it is like the sun; always setting the moment it gets its cue. how did all this begin? she thinks to herself as she does every single day.

“it’s here again,” she tells benedict.

“i know. pushing the rays to one side again, yes? you like to think of the impossible,” benedict teased.

clementine picked up a tiny orange santan before answering. “reading my mind again?” she smiled at the thought of benedict knowing exactly what she wanted to say. reading each other’s thoughts happened too often that every bit of excitement in those unlikely coincidences had been exhausted. when arguments erupt between them they quickly turn to silent rage and allow voicelessness to bind them back.

benedict moved a pile of papers away from his desk and blankly stirred the mug with stale coffee in it. he’d been staring at the dummy of the magazine the whole morning. benedict could not deny that the odds worked overtime against him. he had been working on every section of the magazine with unceasing ardor for four six weeks when the publisher called him up to tell him she had changed her mind about publishing it.

"budget’s gone awry and we need to cut back on expenses. it’s not something i can or want to deal with at this time," the sonorous publisher told him. from the other end of the line, all benedict could hear was a mumble. he knew the product of his hard work had faced its demise even before benedict got to the last page.

he had waited two years to leave. i can’t sit hit here and let time to go by, benedict thought to himself. clementine’s sunset has come again, he said with finality.

balcony, condo view, cypress towers, manila, penthouse, philippines, romance, short story, sunset

thank you note

it's always sunny on the other side 

i shamelessly admit i'm still drowning in holiday whimsy, so please give me one more day of this fete going on inside my head and i promise i'll be back with both feet on the ground at 10:01 on the dot tomorrow morning. 

you just heard/read me talking to my other me. was it loud enough?

almost done with the leftovers and i'm now wolfing on the christmas pudding that came straight from australia (thank you, aunt sally!). i also have a pretty good feeling that a pink mojito is on its way to me. 

an old friend of mine who now lives somewhere in northern ireland got in touch with me last night with a bit of longing to come home. it's his first new year across the globe and he said he missed  the kind of holiday celebration that we have around here. the fireworks are crazy (so crazy that the mortality rate rises every new year's eve) and from where he and his wife are, the new year's celebration is one very quiet event. it's something that a person from my country will take a lot of getting used to.  pets, my college roommie and dear friend who moved to canada a few years ago also subtly complained this morning that they had a quiet new year's eve and told me, “nothing beats holidays at home.” 

to my family and friends who are far away from home, here's how we welcomed 2013... with a big, big bang and with big, big dreams for the year ahead. we dearly wished you were all home.

i did have complaints about the year that passed, but i have so much more to be thankful for. below is the thank you note that i sent out to the universe.

 dear mystical universe that i adore, i thank you...

for the gift of you watching over me and my family,

for good health (dandruff was the worst case scenario around here),

for the dream jobs that we no longer just dream about,

for friends who love us beyond facebook,

for all the cheap books that take us to all the places in the world,

for all the artistic people @ pinterest who always leave me hyperventilating,

for the gift of art that consumes everyone in my family in the sweetest way possible,

for the gift of knowledge through free online university,

for the food everyday that make our waistlines abominable to the sight of others,

for the food that make blissful our everyday,

for the silly fights that help us realize that silliness keeps our family together,

for the gift of humility passed on to us by my husband,

for love – even if we don't often understand why we're drowning in it,

for doc martin and dexter,

and even for the patience that i don't have yet

it may be gloomy around here at times but i know it's always sunny on the other side. here's proof.

fireworks view, cypress towers, c5, christmas pudding, australia, pink mojito, ireland, canada, manila, ultimate blog challenge, universe, free online university, rainbow

new year's resolutions for the antsy

here's wishing everyone a fabulous new year! 

were any of you ever required to write down your new year's resolution on a piece of paper by your teacher? i did that my entire grade school and high school years. makes me wonder where those piles of paper ended up since there were hundreds of us trying real hard to make peace with the word “nice” at the end of each year. it's been decades since i wrote my last one but i sure remember so many of those resolutions that i made. 

after watching the display of fireworks from our balcony last night, i dug up my memory for past resolutions (fireworks never fail to inspire me) and i mentally picked up a piece of paper from 1992. here's what's written down on it. i will never speak one bad word ever again. i will study every night. i will never forget to pray. i will never be late for school. i will significantly cut down daydreaming time.

no, it was another paper that i used in the confessional box. 

the long break from resolutions came in college because i got stuck in the limbo years. when motherhood happened in 2001, that's when it all came back and i didn't have to wait for the turn of the year to make my resolutions... and i didn't have to write them down either. they came on a weekly basis and i worked harder on each item on my mental list. i just have to tell you though that up until now i'm still working on #5 from that antiquated list.

how far could you go with your new year's resolutions? antsy people (like me -- just had to say) have too much going on in their minds and in those webs of thoughts, new year's resolutions are difficult to find -- just like the best episodes of twilight zone. 

here are a few things that will help you stick to those resolutions and make 2013 your happy ever after. 

if you've just written down...

i will dominate the world once i've lost weight-->first, lose weight. that can be done by befriending those excess pounds. looking at yourself in the mirror and hating what you see will only stress you out, and stress eating tags along everywhere like a kid out of school. if the gym sounds like area 51 to you, start by setting realistic goals. don't make the gym a part of your itinerary. dance,  do jumping jacks, clean your house. if none of that works, consult a weight management specialist. i highly doubt it though if those ten-minute workouts  won't work. 

i will quit smoking for the love of my kids
-->heaven just sent you down... but only in thought. sure, you're the universe's gift to mankind for sincerely wanting that but i'm sure as hell your mind will play the part of lex luthor. quitting cold turkey almost always never works. find alternatives like herbal cigarettes and work your way up from there. 

i will have a nasty breakup with procrastination-->know (right now) why you procrastinate in the first place. re-asses your work space because if there's nothing within your reach that makes you giddy especially on mondays, then you're doomed. take yourself on a weekend trip and think about what really makes you happy. really. you might be killing yourself slowly by staying in your least favorite job in the last five years.

i will try something new every chance i get
-->create a calendar that will help you keep track of events, festivals and activities that you want to experience. setting aside a monthly budget is not a bad idea either. it's a great idea.

i will take the road less traveled-->great, because major thoroughfares are now clogged with people who are not even sure where they want to go. and oh, the less traveled road may lead you to your dream job, coveted relationship, whatnot. 

i will eat healthier-->understand what healthy eating means because you may be on the right track and not know it. fad diets may be bad (excuse the corny rhyme) so don't jump right into the band wagon without knowing what is the right diet for you. it does sound like a lot of work to see a nutritionist but you only have to do that once... if you're not naughty. 

i wish everyone the best of luck for the year of the water snake. cheers to everyone in the first ubc for 2013! thank you michelle shaeffer and michele scism for hosting such a great event. 

new year's resolutions, ultimate blog challenge, cypress towers, c5, fireworks view, year of the water snake, philippines, manila