Framed Souls

Framed Souls

As I start writing these words, I cannot help but play inside my head Croce’s “Photographs & Memories”. There, I just had to get that one out.

There is something about photographs that take a hold of me.

Though I do not have them with me in this City that I have learned to love, I can still vividly remember the photographs of my childhood. Birthday photographs, candid shots, posing to a generous photographer (mamang use to tell me that as child, I would flash my smile whenever someone would point their cameras at me, hence I became a favorite among photographers when I was a child), I remember them all. Remembering these old photographs lead me to think about a certain child who looks like me, who acts like me (if I am to believe the words of someone who once loved me), a child who does not bear my name but whose blood is half mine.

I have heard that in some cultures, the taking of photographs was considered taboo, due to their belief that capturing one’s image on paper was defying the hands of time, much more so that it frames one’s soul inside the four borders. Four borders very much like the compass points of our lives.

If there is any truth about these beliefs, then it must be the reason that I have somehow lost my smile.

Thinking about it, my pictures can be categorized into two: the smile and the smile-less snapshots. And as friends who know me, these two categories are apt descriptions for the person that I really am, the person that I have been, and the person that I will be.

There is something about photographs that hold me. And they hold me to certain memories not only my own. Somewhere in my belongings are snapshots I shared with other people, during days and nights when the world was spinning and I was spinning and dancing to its music.

Memories…that’s what its all about, the photographs remind me of how life goes, of the things that begin also begin their end, of those that are found are only waiting to be lost.

And no one can ever be sure if the end will again bring a new beginning, or if forgetfulness would be the sunrise for remembrance and reminiscence. But that is life, as how my 3 decades have taught me.

And there is something about photographs, not mine alone or with someone else, but of another’s that take hold of me.

I guess I am just indulging myself that a glance at a photograph of someone else becomes the reason for something sleeping inside of me to finally wake up, as if it was in a slumber of dreams. Or nightmares. Or denials.

There is something about photographs that tell me of who and how the person is, no matter how far, no matter how silent. They tell me things, they whisper into an ear that is not found in my head but somewhere, everywhere else of who and what I am. And they also whisper to me the things that they do not know.

Framed Souls. Two words that I somehow uttered before writing these entry and came to savor every letter as it walks along the path of my tongue. Framed souls…and I wonder, if it is a prisoner of some sorts, or do photographs have become refugees from some dark and melancholic past.

Statistical Descensions....

My girl read the following statistics to me a couple of days back. And afterwards, made a startling discovery! These figures came from Marie Claire August 2006 Phil. Edition, page 72-74.

Men who can make their partner climax every single time:

Italy 60%

Hungary 58%

Philippines 54 %

Indonesia 54 %

Netherlands 50%

World Average 43%

The most generous men in the world

(% of men who would pay anything to make a woman happy)

Indonesia 64%

Portugal 51%

Poland 42%

Netherlands 40%

Italy 39%

World average 31%

Average # of minutes men last in bed from foreplay to climax

Mexico 23 mins

Philippines 17

Indonesia 16

Average # of minutes men spend on foreplay

United kingdom 17

Philippines 12

Korea 12

World average 16 min

The actual list is actually much longer than these.

and so to my great surprise, i discovered that Not only am I a Filipino, but also partly Italian, Indonesian, and of course Mexican. And lets not forget a dash of being British, for nobility’s sake. heheheheheheeh

ssshhh shhhhshhhadowsssss

Do not turn away when my shadows, stretched between you and I, appears to meld themselves to the disappearing shape of what was once the design of our desires.

Let them remain there, on the edges of your remembrance. Let them feel and discover the outlines that once defined their shape. For now, let them rest and remain.

It was there where they fell.

Do not despair that they still breathe, they, who in the day they were born consented to one day finally die.

After you, they are all that is left.

Soon there will be only me.

And soon, much sooner than we know, it will be as it has always been.

Notes from "The Making of Bones"

From Where Did It Come From?

Though I am not writing as much as I would like to, I can still tell myself that I am “in the process”: for though I may not be staining pure clean white paper, I am nevertheless making the drafts inside my head, refining them, akin to grape juice are kept in barrels, until it is time.

And while I am doing this, it happens that I once again ask myself, from where did it come from? By “it”, I refer to poetry. So if you would allow me to rephrase the question, “From where did my Poetry come from?”

This is not the first time that I asked this of myself, though when I did question myself about this, the questions where in fragments, until later on they became as concrete and complete as it is now. But then, I did find out that having the full question doesn’t guarantee a person that he would have a full answer. The work does not, and will never work to the designs of our desires anyway.

And yet, the question remains.

And though I have been delving into the backdoors of my memory, remembering those that I could and I want to, I have found this question again. Or perhaps it found me again. Nevertheless, it is here.

Try as I might, I could not really tell nor say where it really came from. There are a couple of moments that are possible candidates, moments that might be responsible. And yet like the winds, my opinion of my own opinion does shift.

A little bit of groundwork: I am trying to find out from where it came from because I believe that it has connection to where all of my efforts and attempts would lead to. Cliché I know, but as I was once informed, cliché only become cliché because they hold a modicum of truth in them. and no matter how small, like seeds, the truth may one day become a tree.

The question is there, but not the answer.

Yet I always come back to a certain memory I spent with my mom. In the old days, Public utility jeepneys would stop plying their routes after 7 pm. I had an aunt that lived 2 kilometers nearer to the city proper than we did, and so I was usually there, waiting for my mom to get home from work. I am still trying to unearth the memory of how I usually got to be there on my aunt’s house, but for the moment it would suffice that I am there, and that this is not just a figment of my imagination.

Soon, mom would arrive and we would go home together. I was 6 or 7 years old then.

We would walk the remaining 2 kilometers on foot. As I have said, there are no more vehicles that we could ride home.

2 kilometers may seem a very long distance for a kid whose step would not even span more than a foot at a time. And yet I never remember being tired from all of the walks that mom and I had. They were actually happy moments.

The night sky then is not as it is now. the horizon would not be bleeding from the glow of city lights; hence the night sky was black. And because it was black, the stars would be rendered in full force, and on nights when the night was full, it was surreal in some way.

It was during these walks that my mom talked to me about poetry and stuff, as a way of spending our time on the road. My mind, fragile and small as it was, was very much hungry, a devourer for new ideas and words. And what line mom would recite twice I would try to memorize.

It was during these walks that I learned the work entitled “All things Bright and Beautiful”, “O My Captain! My Captain”, “Invictus” and H.W. Longfellow’s “A Psalm of Life” (which was actually my favorite. My mom also recited to me the masterpiece of Rizal, though I believe I only got to the 4^th stanza.

I remember these poems, and the moments that came, no, the moments that gave birth to these poems of my childhood. Of course, I am not implying that they are the answers to my questions. As I have mentioned in an earlier entry, memories are indeed playful, sometimes bashful, yet for the most part, they are playful.

Who knows, I would know the answer to my question, and to all the other questions still left unanswered, while I am working, while I am still “in process”.

- d. steine

Notes on working on the chapter “The Making of Bones”

From the still untitled autobiography book project

Nothing Serious

Lately, I have been working on my life project.

There are so many ways on how to start it, but I guess it would be best if I would do so from the start. And that could only be the earliest childhood memories that I have, memories whose fingers have clawed deep and fast, that I still remember them as if they were only yesterday when the truth is, some details of yesterday I have already forgotten.

There is a certain trap in trying to remember memories. Somehow, I was afraid if what I was remembering really happened, or just offshoots of my imaginative and creative mind (fine, sue me!). and though I wanted to set the details as much as possible, considering for whom I am writing one of the books, I found myself cautious, less I would end up making up a story rather than what I have set myself to do, and that is telling a story as it happened.

The good thing is, after I got a hang out of being cautious, of looking out for embellishments in my tales, one by one, like little frightened children who went hiding after some monster ran after them, the memories came back, pace by pace, until I found myself laughing and smiling as they gathered themselves around me, above me, beside me, below me.

My fingers, with the help of my trusted pen and paper, went the whole nine and a half yards to welcome them all, until they could take no more. It has been a long time since I have sit down and write like they usually do in the old days.

My fingers were straining, trembling, aching. And yet it was worth it.

Of course, it would have been beautiful if there was no need for me to write the stories down, if I could just tell them, like stories meant to be told on a cold night where only distant stars claim the sky, around a burning fire, the dance of the flames shadows dancing on my face, blending with the glimmer in my eyes and in the wave of my hand.

But that is entirely why I am writing them down, just in case even this simple pleasure of being able to tell the story as how they should be done, in the flesh, would be denied to someone as starving and thriving and striving, and as damned an artiste as I am.

just an old work...

i found something from the past...it felt good when i finally wrote it, and still good somehow till now, though the hands of time has peeled off its layers...


and to find you woman
on the second day of my final years,
when the ghost of tragedies
haunt my every breath and I have started learning
the black acid lessons of forgetting how to smile…

was it I or was it you
who found in the deepest ocean of despair
the whisper of yellow, the laughter of red and the silence of white,
like when stars explode in their silence
or the sensation of the fingers of the sun
caressing the folds of the earth.

Are you the cooing gentle balm
to the violent burn whimpers of my shame and pain,
The proof that one could only define redemption
On the moment of his damnation?

I do not know if angels do exist.

Only that I know that you are there,
Wings, feathers and skin, ripe lips, open eyes and mouth,
Soaring over the currents of sea waves raging
Or basking under the summer sky of pure grace.

I know you exist for the fingers of my thoughts
Are tracing you in the pages of my memory.