astray

yes you found me lingering around the relics of dubai museum. ironic that you call me stray when the world is my home. and you dear sir my friend, how do you fare? astray?

open

you asked why. i could not answer.

i am not running away from something or anything.
i am without any intention to abscond or escape.


i want to see. differently.


yet much i have left and i have lost i have started to miss and hopefully regain. it seems there are beginnings and no ends. life enters a spectrum, splits and splinters into various forms.

this was what you told me. i can no longer be sure if i can keep on waiting still.

a week and more

"it's been a week and adding hours and or
a day more
thriving striving workhorse"

"what you want from me for me
this fleeting
amalgams of files and words."

the waterworks,
aerate and flail spiked braids
of fancy hair.

ginaling

in a good mood

lechon

morning street sweeper

since the first day of its indefinite stay in the south it has gradually accustomed itself to waking as early as five in the morning, and sleeping no later than eleven in the evening. it has witnessed the rotation of the sun for four to five days already, and observed a morning routine of the street sweeper. amidst the tangles and twists and knots of the cables and wires, from where it is stuck, it appreciated how much the street in front of it could appear pleasant with the early morning sunrise warmth and a little bit of coolness of the early morning breeze, were it not for street sweeper. it thought, should it fall from its niche in between the old wooden planks of the balcony, it would be with satisfaction that the road be swept clean from it by street sweeper.

tubig, banka

towards my fourth day tomorrow, i have not been around that much. from this screen however, i went back to the port of sibuyan island in romblon.

walkabout

the car sped through half-lit lamplights through dark roads, almost by itself except for the usual working early birds. it was half past three in the morning and the usual morning traffic clutter could not be found. there were occasional varied lights from running jeepneys, trucks and fxs, but none of the bumper-to-bumper and the noise. he has traveled this route ever since his memory started recording images of his younger years, but this time, it felt different, carrying a stranger presence, seeming to offer him his other calm and solitary face, before he leaves, "yes, you never knew my penchant at reflecting what's in you. just as the floodway waters secretly spin a silky carpet from golden threads of tungsten lamplights, or the pasig river's choice to have flourescent white spun through its murky floor. yes, you never knew how much i can be you, how much you force to hold on and keep, and by daybreak where much of the effort would have been lost only to be re-spun again at nightfall."


it was the uncertainty he fears, and the same that excites him, that could make him, or, otherwise. he could recount the often times he had left but always with the expectation of returning and coming back. there were final destinations and round trips. now it seemed everything will have to move forward, a few occasional glances back but it was to move on and on. "yes," that something seemed to say, could be the still battling darkness from morning light, or the route, the river, the water, or the road, "yes, this is your walkabout."

moving

tomorrow i fly to and start my first day of indefinite stay in mindanao.

so now i am still packing, hoping i manage to contain the essentials i need.

when the lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window

something about today made me remember this from the sound of music.

whether through the door or the window, it's the same wide horizon we see outside. just that now, it's through the window. it's when we get outside we learn how much the journey to go out has shaped and developed our perspectives and perceptions of that same wide horizon.

to that sickness place

feeling he's crossing over to that sickness place, with a decision to make
he takes a pill.

signs

i know that now until the upcoming days, you are waiting for some sign to tell you where and what. you are a vagabond, a life traveler, a journeyman, i'm sure you can make the most of what you choose. as far as i know you, you never were fond of the usual, the safe, the monotonous and the popular. you skew the curve. you make unpredictable ones. you have that fondness to explore the alternatives.

and the signs, i am sure they will come, as i know you know what you want. you learned how to fly, so fly.

half of sixty

'we are turning thirty this year.' it is the last memory of the previous night's long conversation, and it stuck like a leech, draining every prospect he once had of his future, his every plan to set things straight and make lives... well... well.

and he is turning thirty. she is turning thirty. they are turning thirty. apparently, everyone he knows is turning thirty, maybe a year older or younger, but in the rough about stage of thirty when... friends are getting married, raising babies and toddlers and small angels or imps, when friends are also starting to leave and live away, when friends start to receive signs of dying and death, and when friends get stuck at dead-ends.


"what would you have then?"

"it seems either a dead-end or a crossroad. but options do open. and the prospects are hard but enriching, life-threatening maybe but life-changing. what would you have? it must be a life choice now, could it?"

"we are turning thirty this year, and options do open."

clinging

on the verge of falling, fall graciously.
nearly breaking down, break honorably.

and the mallet will splinter
into a multitude of gashes and wounds,
bleed and pain,

let go.



then, a re-creation of what is called formidable.

push

nature. as it was, as it is, as it will be. that is the dynamic flexibility of nature. it is nature. it is in our nature.

he paused to think. if it must be, there must be distinctions or stratifications or levels in nature as i can never see in my nature to stoop that low.



if only he could continue driving on, until his destination, but cars could not run free. his sanity gone thinner, he could always choose to push the truck to move down a steep decline, though it will definitely send him crashing down.


alas there are people who, for utter baseness, with, apparently, a fancy whim to corrupt others, choose and claim lies, and achieve objectifying their self-acclaimed greatness. such, he thought, brings a developmental downfall. artificial markets, artificial needs, and artificial claims, corporate or personal, work to market specific interests. his story was manipulated to serve as an artificial tool for baseness, as he digressed from focusing on the road to the opened mouth of a tiger. memento mori.



the world opened numerous opportunities. the fly opted to be small, but with the ability to thrive copiously. the cockroach went into ready hiding. and bottom-dwellers.




the car need not run. crowded, they can blend in, he heard. and there is always the sea. vast and seemingly endless.

a long and winding country road

and his road is a long and winding one.

he could not make up his mind which... the long and winding country road... tune to hum in his head, the one that leads to her door or the one that takes him home. or just maybe he could do both.

crossroads

they came at the start of the tenth year.

the pushes and pulls were overwhelming.


she could not fathom the ins and outs of each option.

he could not simply decide which should be the more practical road.


i, on the other hand, still had to needlessly sort the relevance, whatever it meant for them.

new year clean-up

with the new year, i managed to dispose stack after stack of almost 5 years accumulated trash and needless things.


relocated these...







and re-arranged some of these...