Rituals

its 2:36 a.m. as i am starting this. i have been checking on my contacts, only to find out that most are offline. As it should be. Most, if not all of them might be sleeping by this time after all the lights and sound (and the rain) have died.

but not me. I have this ritual to perform. I am going to wait for the first sunrise of the year.

i cannot clearly remember when i started doing this, only that i have been doing it for a decade or so. i cannot even say why i started doing this. Perhaps this all started just when i started losing what most people would label as sanity, conformity.

All these years i wait, all alone.

So it got me thinking as to when i would end this solitary vigil for the first fingers of the sun to caress my face...

...perhaps if there would be someone by my side, and with her hands she would hold my fragile face, stroking...caressing...with a warmth that to rival that of morning stars.

2 Years and 1 Week : A Little Self-Indulgence (or is it torture?) before the year ends...

This is something i wrote earlier this year...

A Letter for Quesalina

Quesalina,

Will you find it odd, or something to be mad about, or sad perhaps, that in the end, it was your sarong, your shawl that was with me.

I have to admit I did not think this would be so. But that is irrelevant now. The day is nearly over, and here I am, garbed in the cloth that was suppose to take the place of your arms in your distant absence.

Absent as you are now, absent as you have been for a long time now.

Sometimes, I tell myself that it was a dream, a very beautiful dream, so vivid that even now, I can still recall the colors and flavors of you.

Perhaps it was a dream.

Indeed, it must have been a dream. Inscribed on the edge of this shawl are words so much like the dust that dreams must be made of. So much like you, Quesalina. For you, too, have always been a dream, and through all those times I held you, you wore another name.

Quesalina, I do not know the proper semantics of goodbye. Nor do I desire to say so. Allow me then, to make it like this:

To Quesalina, the most glorious of all my stars, in daylight or in dark.

Today, on the last year of the year is exactly 2 years and 1 weak since the last time she held me, since the last time she loved me..since the last time i was safe in her arms, since the..you get the point.

I am trying to be honest as i ask ,yself if i have been whole since then...

...well, i should be, right? It has been that long to be mourning over the death of something that may have ever been true or alive in the first place...

I Confess I Have Been Loved... (and perhaps one day i will be, again. Perhaps)

One last Indulgence.



One Final Last...

Postcard for Quesalina

Quesalina,

It will understand if you will never forgive me.
But i have already forgiven myself...

...and i believe you should do the same: forgive yourself.

Yup, this is for you, Because You Know I Exist and Thus I Am Not Dead (Yet)

What a year it has been…

…and another one is on the way.

Yet before everything, we have a few hours in between, and every moment counts.

No matter how things go in our lives, there is nothing compared to living. Yeah, it does not happen like they do in fairy tales, doesn’t start with “once upon a time” (though I could be wrong because it does actually) and always ends with “they/she/he/it lived happily ever after”, but since we do not know anyone reliable to tell us that the other side is better than this one (if there is indeed something after this side of life is another story altogether), we are stuck with this. We have our lives. We have time. We still do.

To all the sorrows that loomed like giant waves and fell on us in its attempt to drown us, to let us go of those that we cherish the most in each of our lives, I can only say this: dying is too easy. And though living is not that convenient, it does offer a lot, if we only allow our hopes to see the colors and shape amidst the tears that blur our eyes.

I have this ritual that I do on the eve of the new year: I do not sleep, instead I wait for the sun to rise, the first sun rise of the year…

..and every afternoon I always make myself look at the sky, especially on the hours before darkness would unfold, and I can’t help but smile for the sky is never the same, as if some great artist never fails to show us a new opus.

Some call him God (though what your definition of God may be different from my own, and whether we both believe in such an existence or not is also another story for another day)

Point is, there is always something new.

As a good friend once said “It can’t rain all the time…your tears wont fall forever…”

I am happy to have shared/met/experienced/messaged/texted/missed/talked/{add your own here} life with you on this year that is about to die….

…as I am happy to share the birth of the new one.

If you read this far, thank you. I know I could have just said “Happy New Year!” like everyone else, but then, I am not like everyone else, I am damon.steine, and so are each of you your own self, your own name and faces, each one like no one else, filled with so much of the world, its hope and despair, of nightmares and dreams, of hope. Here’s a smile for you =).

I know you exist, and as along as I live, you will not die.

A Peek at The Secret Lives of a Starving Poet : The Insanity Process - #1 - Self Conversations

this is not gonna make sense. fair warning.

an old post, like a year ago. and it tugged me.

While You Were Sleeping

d. steine

i discovered
the shape of my desire

to navigate the waters of sleep
without signal flares, rafts, or life jackets
like you do.

with you.

reading it led me to one of my old haunts, my first home in the web actually The HideAway (circa 1997 or 98) and led me to the following

iNnOcenCe

your innocence
as fine as silk
i ripped off
from your fragile soul

rape i guess
and i basked as i violated you
grinning with every inch away
and as i found, and
left your core
i was blind
i did not see
the flicker of your darkness

i became a prisoner of freedom

i guess
i should have never
violated you
in any manner

my fault
i guess
that your womb is
afraid to conceive love
for me

then i remembered that i once kept a site for those seduced by the pen (my first failure, i must confess) and found that it doesn't exist anymore...

...and so i went to the next one (this site suffered from one bad makeover om my part and i ended up ruining the design that my sis created for me) and got hooked on this...


ode for eupee

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

as i was doing this entry..i got stumped...lit a stick...3 inhales...hands reaching out for the beer....then made a new window to view my page here in multiple, looked at the tags, saw POETRY and clicked on it....


[-1234456745923489237493iuyierklhfiofyklhiofydisfheiofysdf <---the next 10 minutes]

and then i publish this.

voila.

i need my coffee

Last Night

We started out when the night was young.

First, to an establishment whose very name promised food in packages, and it did not fail. Wrapped in banana leaves, environment friendly as compared to styro boxes, though I don’t think the banana tree/plant from where the leaves were chopped off would agree with me. Beef steak on banana leaves, never had that before, nor have I ever been a fan of salted eggs whose slices I separated from the rice rice, like a surgeon working a scalpel between fresh and rotting flesh.

Nothing like a good beer afterwards, but it was not on the menu, and so we decided to change venues, and found ourselves on a local coffee shop.

Cappuccino in hand, we chided a friend that we went there for coffee and not to ogle jailbaits. Coffee shops serve coffee, not fresh meat. Though I have to confess that I did take notice of the girl near the entrance even before we parked the car. I even took more notice of her when, just as I was pushing the glass door on my way inside, she crossed her legs while sitting on that brown chair, very much like an invitation to come in. But I was after coffee, not meat, fresh, used, or what else.

A hello here and a wave there, our city being so much like the common playground. Familiar faces flashed, some like fast cars, others like a tricycle laboring over the last meters before the engine finally dies.

Coffee was good, but there is nothing like beer. The car engine purrs, as if in anticipation of a kill, of the thrill of the hunt, or the language for the promise of a wild and rough night, bared tongues and claws.

Ooops.

The travel was brief, the flash of the lights and the boom and beats signaling the presence of beer.

The night was young, nubile, and pregnant with promises about to be born.

I hear my name, and my glance reveals old faces, familiar faces, faces I have never seen for quite a long time.

Hands shake. A kiss to the head. Cheeks greet in the manner of lips. They are my brothers and sisters, bound not by blood, nor by similarities in our brief, and for the most part of the past years, distant lives. If anything, we are all brothers and sisters because we are who we are, each and every one of us.

It was a night of words, yet no words describe it.

Afterwards, all alone on my way home after my third set of coffee, while waiting for my ride, I wondered, and somehow realized, that it is very much indeed good to be alive, when friends (oh, I forgot to mention the past lover who was also there who I am very sure saw me, though I cannot tell if she affirmed my existence) come out when you least expect them, where a few minutes burns far longer in memory, brief moments before they have to be absent again, in the hope that faces will see each other some other day again.

Or some other night perhaps.

Christmas is all about...

..the kids (though in this case it should be about this kid)...



i think i should have one...but wait..i do have one:

it's just that i lost him.

but then again, i never had him to start with, so how can i lose what i never had with me?! =(

Delivery Day

This must be the closest I would ever get in my quest for a greater understanding of women.

I am giving birth.

It’s gonna be a few weeks till delivery day, and yet, I must be feeling what expectant mothers usually feel.

Fear. Sadness. Joy. Desperation. Hope.

It has not been easy, but I never was one to take the easy (and more often sane) way.

For all the glorious women I met and shared my life with, thank you for the memories. We may have said goodbye, but the memories burn, my flickers of light in my country always in darkness.

Movado I

I received my gift from my sister. A time piece.

It’s supposed to be simple: it’s the holiday seasons, and though I am not much a fan of it lately, there are other people, well, most people see it as the so called time for giving, and they do give gifts.

But for some reason, wearing a watch feels something new to me.

I used to wear watches before but somewhere along the way I let go of them. The reason is actually that they either break down, or I have this tendency to lose them, same way I lost track of time when I’m out there, hunting for metaphors.

This is my first time to wear a watch in more than a decade. More like 15 years.

For some reason, I feel a thug inside of me. Something started ticking, and with each movement of the hand it builds up, a silent crescendo.

It feels more like a countdown.

In a week, the year dies to make way for the birth of the new one.

I am old, I am getting old, and I have to confess I am feeling it.

And with the upcoming waves of memories of my failures and tragedies and misfortunes, I cannot help but brace myself for it. No, I am not one to make a run for shelter, as how my brother knows of me.

It’s just a matter of time.

Draft : Song for Cai

(Draft) Song for Cai

with a smile.

this is how
i remember you,
sister;
your eyes, your face
your smile born for me,
for a love that crossed
mountains & hills,
neighboring cities,
for a happiness
that was not mine alone,

soft as white clouds,
your smile were like rose petals
fragile amidst the changing winds,
longing, and long in waiting
from its travels
in paths paved
with thorns
as roses are.

that season of summer love
has ended and died
but not for your smile,
not yet until...

...stars navigate their own maps
in daylight or in dark,
there are the seasons,
and you with your smile
a season for bloomings & harvest.

and for this song.


- from the "My Songs" chapter of
"I Confess I Have Been Loved..." by steine.d
All Rights Deserted 2008

Musings : Junctions

Endings are born from the womb of Beginnings.

Yet between these two separate poles is a space vast as one cares, or dares, to discover. Centuries spawned from decades, years from months, days from hours from minutes from seconds.

Moments from moments from moments....

It is in this vast space where origin and destination exchange faces, where comings and goings weave together the carpet, the tapestry that is Existence.

There is time for everything, even if only in that span after one has drawn breathe before breathing out, to savor that Moment leading to those other moments amidst the transportations of colors and shapes.


- after viewing E. Jumalon's entry for the Philip Morris Philippine Art Awards

Kill Your Darlings says W. Faulkner..what living darlings?!

05 October 2007
Kill Your Darlings says W. Faulkner..what living darlings?!

It has been sometime since the last one.

I just finished a novel lent to me by one of my sisters, Honee. Kill Your Darlings. Somehow, it was that kind of book that i needed, and i am grateful. Needed, especially with what i have been working on for the past months....

....reminds me to check if i was able to remind myself that Project Life would go like this....

still, a few more months till the end of the year..and the first book will be done. finally....

but, until its done....

It is still slated for next year, and yet it has been haunting me, THE MAKING OF BONES. I wonder if it would be artistic suicide to do that project in novel form....

life goes on.

Confessions : Walking Home / Of Fathers & BabyMakers

Confessions : Walking Home

The streets were empty, save for the dogs that were enjoying the freedom to play on the streets after the jeepneys, tricycles, and pedicabs went to their respective homes to sleep. The streets were clear, though dusty, bathed in the yellow glow from lonely separate lamp posts.

There I was, with my shadow and the sound of my footsteps, walking.

Even with my eyes closed, I knew how far I had to walk, the slight curves of the road, each and every uphill that would lead me to home. With two dirty stones clutched in each palm, I set off, one step after the other.

It has been years since I last walked this road.

Walking along, I pass by establishments, thrift stores and houses that old memory could not remember for they were not there. I cross the streets while nearing an ice plant whose gate is guarded by dogs who lie still and stiff, and perhaps as cold as the ice that comes from its buildings.

Somewhere along the way, I am greeted with the aroma of dried fish. I have smelled this before during the day when I usually take my ride, but the scent of dried fish smells different, heavy, as if they were sleeping like everyone else.

I walk, and I remember.

I remember that this road is where I found the path that led me to poetry. Mamang and I used to walk this same road when I was a child. She would recite a few lines for me to remember, a few lines each night until I would finally have them all, and we would spend our time not walking, but reciting verses from people who were actually dead. The road was dark then, this was way before these lonely lamp post find themselves rooted here. I remember that while I recited the lines that I strove to remember, I would see the dark sky filled with so many stars.

Bright lights from sleeping houses all around the horizon have blanked out the light of these old stars. Many of them I am sure are like the writers of those poems I first discovered: bright but dead.

Suddenly I hear the barking of dogs coming towards me and getting closer with each step. I grip the stones in my palms, feeling the crusted earth on its surface break into dust before I let them drop from my hands.

I am Home.

24 june 2007

Confession: Of Fathers & BabyMakers

Sorting out through my collection of files for Project Life, I stumbled across snapshots of my little kid. Jian, as I am led to believe by his mother, is everything a son could ever be. But he is not that little anymore. He just turned seven last February, and yet he has made his presence felt: among his family and I am sure, among the girls as well.

Better than the father, I should say. =)

Which leads me to the events, separate and distinct from each other and yet like puzzle pieces they fit with each other’s varied form to produce a picture. That picture is him. Life indeed has this certain characteristic of being too good for words, it crosses and breathes with time, it calls forth memories, it stirs and rouses dreams that are sleeping in the dark.

Life clings. It is the vine on the pole. It is the pole for the vine.

Seven years is indeed a long time. So many things have happened. And when it comes to Jian, I confess I was not there.

Still, thinking about how he is doing somehow lights a bulb my sad face. He looks like I was when I was a kid, which I know is something that is in the realm of genetics. But kids grow up to be like or unlike their fathers with more than genetics. In our case, perhaps my presence, in the form of my absence, surely had something to do with it.

Whether it was for good or not, I could not really say.

If only…If only… but then, as I have taught myself if anything I know about life, it is that time and chance, like somebody ages ago said, happens to everyone. I believe in this. I have to confess that I lost it. I lost the chance. Perhaps being melodramatic I could say something like “it was stolen from me by the clutches of fate and powers too much for a mere mortal such as I” or some other bull. Yeah, that would be bull.

There are no words enough to describe life and living, so it must be for love and loving. Lately, I have been asking myself how and why and where and what and when, all the relevant and irrelevant questions pertaining to this dark and mysterious being, Love, that is. Really, after 3 decades and the first year of the fourth one, here I am, like how it all began, empty handed, save for the memories in my head in the shape of monsters but are actually with the face of my true and honest desires.

I am led to believe that in more aspects than I know, Jian and I share a lot of things. Traits, mannerism, dreams, hopes, childhood memories. Well, and good, and somehow fitting, considering that we are indeed bound to each other, in our own presence as each of us individually is, and in our absence from each other.

Being home, setting myself through this path that I somehow knew long beforehand was what I was going to get (and incidentally, one of the mysteries that somehow someone I dearly loved was able to see out of my cloaks and shadows) has made me realize a lot of things about myself. Ok, I take that back: they are things I made myself face amidst the changing weather of the world, the same changes that affect the seasons of my life.

With all that I know about my son, because the things I don’t know honestly doesn’t matter really until I get to know them, I have could say this.

Indeed, I am a Great BabyMaker. =(

It still remains to be seen, or perhaps never, if I I could claim the same about being a Father. =)

6 july 2007

2:14 p.m.

Farm.

Confessions : On Coming Home + On Leaving

Confessions : On Coming Home + On Leaving

To where my senses first recognized the faint shapes, colors, textures and scents of things to come.

To where I found my first playground…

To where I first discovered that those that begin are born with an end. To where I became so much than just myself, where I turned the first pages of my love & trust that are now and forever will be the first and most unforgettable of betrayals.

To where I have lived my life. To where I am going to live my life. And who knows, it ends there too…

To where I ran away from because of so much wars, and yet there is so much peace in its narrow streets.

To where, well, whatever, wherever, whenever.

I am afraid.

But Mother, I am coming home.

. . . .

In life, some things only happen once, some do not happen at all.

May I meet you again, discover you again, all over again.

Goodbye.

Confessions : Remembering the Rain

Remembering the Rain

The sun had fallen and sank deep somewhere west. Cold winds prowled and howled the streets, their whispers cold, like the impending rain. I was waiting for something, nothing, and then I saw her.

She was a friend of a friend, and we were barely introduced. Our eyes locked, within a blink. Within a blink, and yet I discovered that within a blink one can decipher a hundred frames. Her eyes were hidden behind glass lenses, held by a dark frame. It is all too possible the light was played with my eyes, not a vision but a mere reflection of my desires. I felt as if I knew her, was going to know, would have known her…

Suddenly she was gone. Yet within those hundred frames I remember how tried to unravel the maps in the curls of her hair, the mystery that was her, there in her eyes.

She was gone. And like all things gone in my life, I tucked those hundred frames inside some distant province of my memory.

I never knew when I would meet her again. I did not know her, and perhaps it is because of this that I longed to discover her. For some reason I knew with a certainty that she came from the same mold to whom I have always been grateful to trace. I did not know her, and even when I closed my eyes I could barely remember her face. Save for those eyes of her, and those curls that have seemed to have wrapped themselves around me, binding me.

The days and night came like fresh bread to be devoured by the ants of time.

I went on with my work, my passion, my devotion, or in some way my penance for those I have sinned against. I went on with my life, of what was left of it. I could not tell if I would see her again, only that I remember her.

Her name sounded so much like the rain. Like the rain that came on that night that swept the streets, the rain that swept things and places and answers away from me.

Confessions: An Affinity for Goodbyes + Iligan: Glimpse of a Mother City

Confessions: An Affinity for Goodbyes + Iligan: Glimpse of a Mother City


I must confess I have a deep affinity for goodbyes. I have my own share of being given that, and though I too have my own share of acting on its arrival, there lingers this scent of it far beneath my skin; that even after I have practiced it, edited it and finally done with it, there remains, for me, that invisible, faint and fragile cord binding me to those I have said it. So much like my own love, whose corpses I carry own long after its death.

I must also confess that I do know that goodbyes were designed for a reason: if not to make the act of saying “hello” again sweeter, it is the act that we could do in this world that spins and along its orbit things that we knew are suddenly nowhere to be found, save perhaps for traces, fragments in memory whose blossom smells so sweet and yet who in time would also fade away.

A few more days, that is all that remains, and perhaps this is my rehearsal for that day. Perhaps so that saying “hello” again would be sweeter to my soul, or just as a precaution in case I would not find the chance to greet it again.

But before anything else, allow me to tell you of whom I am saying goodbye to.

I must confess that Iligan was to me then one more city among the rest. But as how things go, in real life or in stories, things happen, things changed and soon I found myself in exile here, a refugee from a city that has filled my soul with such was wars and dying that to save myself I ran away from it.

Iligan is a Mother, and I have been living with her sons and daughters for these past years. I have come to love Iligan as a son would love a mother, though I have said it before that as a Mother, Iligan never loved me: for she never let her daughters discover me, accept me, comfort me, and ultimately her daughters never loved me. Of course, it is possible that the problem in being unloved lies not with her daughters but with me: I carry in the name I chose for myself the stains of so much living and dying, and perhaps these very things might have hidden me from their senses, from their eyes, from their hearts. Perhaps.

Still, I have many things to be grateful for. Iligan became my home. A stranger as I may be, I have been made witness to changes in her lives, I have breathe her blossoms, walk her skin, and I have tried to understand the murmurs and beatings of her heart as a poet is bound by his passion to attempt to.

In my soul is a room that lies empty: long ago, in a distant city, it was filled with the voices and presence of my brothers and sisters, who, even without a drop of common blood in our veins were bound by pigments, blank paper & ink, laughter and tears. My heart aches still for their present absence. Yet, I thank Iligan for a small space beside this empty room that was filled with the songs and voices of her artist and poet sons and daughters. In them I found certain kinship with my dearly missed brothers and sisters.

As long as I live and remember, these artistic sons & daughters of Mother Iligan are my brothers, are my sisters.

It was in Noria where I built my first refuge. I am thankful for the glimpses of life that was around me. I shall always remember with fondness the laughter of children playing just outside my place, awakening me in the process. Or the stories and voices of the drunks who seemed to be always there, with their stories, with their long slurred talks, of how they always offered me a glass or two of gin, whisky or beer every time I would pass by that narrow pathway when I go to or come back from work.

My second solitary refuge was in San Miguel. No, not the barangay, but I call it that for it was known for the school that was in the neighborhood. A short walk would lead me to a park. I forgot its name, only that it was a park shaped in a circle where lovers spent their idle time before saying goodbye for the night. A nearby store served food, and for some nights they filled my hungry stomach. This store was in front of Iligan Medical Center College, and I have seen a lot of crazy things during my stay here. The park deserves some mentioning again, even if only for the memory of those times I walked in circles around it while trying to unravel mysteries and miseries of m sleepless nights.

The City Hall of Iligan is situated on Buhanginan Hill. This was where I worked. It offers a splendid view of the city and the sea that stretches after it. At night, the grounds and garden in front of it is filled with lights, a popular destination for tourist, families, lovers. How many nights have I stood there, alone, gazing from that vantage point from where I have been and to where I would be going!

Once, with someone’s hand clasping mine, we walked the dark streets of Mercado, worried, but unafraid. We were looking for shelter, and we found it in each other’s arms.

On my first days, wary of then getting lost, I found myself a shop that offered coffee in the center of the city. Aptly it was named “El Centro.” The coffee was not the best I have had, it was quite ordinary, I should say, but the people who ran the place welcomed me with such warmth that it did made the coffee taste better. It has been though changes the past two years, but I shall never forget it.

An hour and a half away from Iligan is Cagayan de Oro City. I have my shares of bus rides to that city, and my curiosity made me hungry to discover so much more than her name, though I must confess that most of my time spent their was between the arms and legs of a love that found me in Iligan but originated there.

I am leaving to devote myself to my passion, though I know I would be writing so much more about Mother Iligan in the months to come. Still, allow me to share two more frames.

One: for now, let me say that Iligan City is so much like the Garden of Eden. Made much more so that I felt how the love of a handful of distant women snaked around my fingers, as if mapping every inch of my frail body, twirling through my tongue, gripping my thoughts. And like snakes, they left, but not before sinking their fangs dripping with the poison of abandonment in my soul and flesh. They say fragments and traces of those poison would always remain, they would always somehow maim, no matter how little or small, but before I leave this City I am proud to say I have washed away most of their poison through the twin rivers of my eyes.

And Lastly, why I love Iligan. Mother as I call her, the reason could only be from the creatures that I have and will always love, the creatures whose love I never had and will always long for. One of God’s finest creations: women.

I present to you the Daughters of Mother Iligan as how I love them.

Never have I seen women so vibrant, whose inner fire burn with such warmth as the women of Iligan. Their voices are soft, yet forceful enough that they penetrate the walls made by men and by our patriarchal culture. They speak with intelligence, with fluid reasoning that only idiots and fools would not listen to them. They are indeed the womb that gives life to the city. Along the years I have met many of them, different, and yet all the same. I never thought I would meet women such as them here, but I have, and my life has been more meaningful.

Wherever I may be after I leave, I shall always carry the stories, the images of your women, of your daughters Mother Iligan so that her kind would know of them, discover them, and find within themselves the fire that buns in the hearts and soul of your beloved and fantastic daughters.

I have said that I wished I could have lasted a little bit longer. Since I have not, may all that I gave as I worked for the glorious women of Iligan be enough to be called a brother, to be called by Mother Iligan as her son.

Thank you, Mother Iligan.

I have said so much. I have said so few.

Confessions : Nothing Matters

Confessions : Nothing Matters

If anything, the past few days have allowed me to live the remaining days that I have in this city without rush. No plans, no nothing to follow, just taking each moment as it comes, without worries, without cares, cigarette on one hand, a hot mug of coffee on the right, experimenting, admiring the designs of smoke rings before they fade away.

Some friends tell me that I should go and write. I do not. I have all the time when I get home to do just that, and so I do take things easy.

For some reason, leaving makes me think of all that has transpired since I arrived here. And with each door of yesterday that I unlock, it then leads me to other doors, and other doors, and other doors, all reaching out to that chunk of memory we call the past.

As my friends have told me, I do have a colorful past. Please, do not be fooled by the word “colorful” though it is really that. It has the spectrum, and all the right red and dark and gray shades.

But then, if there is something that I realize these past few days, with me and my memories my only companion, it is this: nothing matters among them.

The past, my past that is. So what if I was once loved? So what if I was once happy? So what for all the things that I lost and the things that I found?

There is nothing about the past that matters. I do not know if I should be happy about this, or sad, but that’s how it is: it doesn’t matter how everything went before.

Because no matter how sweet or tragic things were in my life, its there, in the past. And for a good reason, the past is indeed dead.

With these few days spent in leisure for I know I would not have days like these when I get home, all that matters is how I live every single day after this hiatus is over.

Of course, I do have some use for the past: if anything, it’s my own personal sponge and I’m going to squeeze it of every last drop that I could, to use as water, as paint, as ink for what I have to finish. But that is all.

All that remains for me is to somehow make something worth the remaining time I have out of the garbage that is my past.

I do not know if I would endure. I do not know if I would finish it. I am afraid like I have never been before. But I have to go on, and so it, live the life I chose and sacrificed for, and die the death that is its payment.

Friends, this is how I am these days. All I know is that, after losing everything that I knew would make me happy, I should never lose the things that made me who I am: my madness, my shame, my despair, my stains.

All that matters is how I live each and every day of Project Life.

At least, I can still enjoy the remaining days in transition: between the past that doesn’t matte, and the future that may never be.

I’m tired.

Confessions : "It is The Mystery That Lingers, and Not the Explanation."

hello.

i did promise i was gonna write something about the things that leads to changes. last time, it was about knowledge, about knowing things and the changes that it brings.

on the other hand, there is its lover, its twin, its partner in the great dance that is living and dying: not knowing.

because indeed, in our lives, there are events that take hold of us, not because of what we know, of what we have felt, of what we have endured, of memories that we can smell and taste and feel.

Indeed, it is the mystery that lingers, and not the explanation.

Somehow, these mysteries that defy our attempts to uncover leads us to a sense of something that is lacking. in my life, i have realized early on that as much as knowing can be painful, so it is with not knowing.

there is this old saying about "the things that we do not know about could not hurt us". bah, if only this could be true. like all smart quips, this admittedly holds a modicum of truth, for it would not have survived otherwise. Still, only that, a fragment, depends on the weather, so they say. but as we all know by now, there are some things that we do not know that hurt us unlike any other.

i am leaving, and for the past 2 years of this fruitful life, it has come to an end. well, soon it will anyway. the seasons have lived and died, and soon so will i be of the past, of the things that could not last. i have a many questions, some with answers, many without.

i have to admit that for these things that i desire to uncover (which at some point i believe becomes so much more elusive for they are fueled by the same force as my desire to uncover them) and though i know i could hope for chance and time to allow me the grace to find them, i am also realistic that may of them would not be so.

funny, that is only i did not know where to find the answers to these mysteries that possess me. but then, as much as i can try to ask, i could also be denied.

Denied as i have been, denied as i am now, denied as i will be.

It is the mystery that lingers, and not the explanation...

and so i would leave this city, and everything i know and do not know of it. i leave with these mysteries that are all mine to keep until memory fails me but never ever mine to uncover.

Perhaps, like gifts that come in different packages, and in varied forms, these mysteries are the gifts that is given to me.

And so, i will go, here, there, anywhere..

However. Whatever.

Confession : Confessions

i have to admit, i feel at ease, without worries of giving my best and worse to my job.

no more early morning wakeup calls...no more time in/out...no more deadlines...

i sleep late..i wake up late...

still, i have to admit, what i have now are just mere weeks..about 3 more weeks to go before this piece of heaven is to be traded for something so much like hell.

as much as i am at ease..i am also a little bit eager, though i do hold myself back...for the very thought of plunging into the project seems to burn me up, seems to make time go so fast..feels like its eating up what years i have left. at least, i am going there, into the frame where i have run away from...

i also have to admit, that i am afraid.

afraid that i wont endure it. that i would lose myself. that i would lose everything.

funny, that i have almost lost everything. i tell myself, that leaving this city is not that bad, considering it never loved me anyway. and aside from friends, no one here got close enough to feel my absence. which i suppose is my fault, keeping myself and my armor always in place. which i also suppose is a good thing, for it means i do not have to add another name on the long list that i remind myself of every night, before i close my eyes...

..the names and faces flow like a lullaby...

i have to admit, i will somehow miss this city.

i will miss Cagayan de Oro, if not for the ghost of memories that wait for me there, then for the books that i found on second-hand stores at bargain prices. who knows, one last raid might prove essential for the library back home. i will miss the park, the long jeepney rides, the fried chickens..

i will miss her smile, her voice, as i have always had...

i have to admit, that there are a lot of things i do not know about. things i would like to know before i go.

but i know.

Confessions : A Letter to Quesalina + I Resign

A Letter for Quesalina

Quesalina,

Will you find it odd, or something to be mad about, or sad perhaps, that in the end, it was your sarong, your shawl that was with me.

I have to admit I did not think this would be so. But that is irrelevant now. The day is nearly over, and here I am, garbed in the cloth that was suppose to take the place of your arms in your distant absence.

Absent as you are now, absent as you have been for a long time now.

Sometimes, I tell myself that it was a dream, a very beautiful dream, so vivid that even now, I can still recall the colors and flavors of you.

Perhaps it was a dream.

Indeed, it must have been a dream. Inscribed on the edge of this shawl are words so much like the dust that dreams must be made of. So much like you, Quesalina. For you, too, have always been a dream, and through all those times I held you, you wore another name.

Quesalina, I do not know the proper semantics of goodbye. Nor do I desire to say so. Allow me then, to make it like this:

To Quesalina, the most glorious of all my stars, in daylight or in dark.

_____ _____ _____

I Resign.

I, Jason Kris R. Kanindot, do hereby resign as staff member of the City Women's Affairs Desk effective 01 May 2007.

Yup, I did. =) 2 years & 5 Months after. Thank you everyone.

Confession : Farewell...Hello...

I really wish I could have lasted a little bit longer..

A handful of months. That was all, just enough to tie up loose ends, see some sights, shy kisses, last goodbyes.

But as I told a friend yesterday, it happens that there are simple things that we really desire, that would make us happy, and yet these desires will be denied, no matter how much we would want them to be true. In some ways, the act of wanting it to be true fuels the denial.

December 2004. I made a vow that I would offer at least 2 but not more than 3 years of my life to the cause of those whom I love the most. A month shy of hitting the 50/50 mark. Not bad I suppose.

Still, there it is, that lingering feeling, of my desire, to have lasted a little bit more.

But then, it doesn’t matter anymore what I desire.

I do believe there are at least two women in this world who would be happy to know that finally, I am falling. For the two of you, and the rest of your kind should there be others, I have this to say: “fuck you, and yup, the fuck was that good, and thank you.”

For my friends, I must confess that I am not doing as well as all of you might hope, but hey, its me ok? And though I am godless, I am thankful for your prayers.

Things that live die. We all know that.

The sun has fallen. But in this darkness where I am now, I know, as you know, that the sun will rise again.

Farewell.

Hello.

Confessions : It was not Change...

it has been spinning and spinning inside of my head and so i decide to write it down, to send it out of orbit.

the thing is this, a lot of people, almost everyone is familiar with the so called "great" things that comes with change. "great", in the loose sense of the word, for greatness of things does not always mean happy things. Everyone i know, and even those i don't agree to this. I do. change is indeed that, and so much more.

but what got me thinking was that for all the things that change can bring, nobody remembers or does go at some length to mention what made the CHANGE possible.

Knowledge. Knowing. Knowledge.

Yes, it is that simple yet very essential aspect. a simple word. and yet what a hell it brings.

and as for the power of those things that you have no knowledge of..well..i will write about it next time.

Confessions : I Will Not Miss This!

Its gonna be my birthday, and since i already gave two birthdays to this city whom i have learned to love (though this city is till to love me, as for the scarcity of her daughters to show token of appreciation of my hard work (yeah, its really hard work pirating animes, mp3, and various softwares after and even during office hours.)

Its my birthday, and what better way (one among many, i should say) of spending it than being in the exhibit of four glorious women, the women of the Jumalons.

I have, and will always have fond memories for this family whom i consider the last Art Family in dear beloved Zamboanga. i miss being in their house that speaks nothing but art that is their life. They even invited me to paint my poetry (but i am a total failure with pens and brushes, i should admit). Long talks. Good Music. Cold Beer. Hazy smoke. The scene from the kitchen, with a small stream and the rice field...i miss them.

That is why, i am not going to miss this. Honest!

just my new album list...

the government does not pay enough.

but then, i chose this job coz i loved it, and at the same time it gave me the opportunity to prove to myself that what i wrote, what i spoke, that all of my poetry and ideas are not merely as they are, but i am able and willing to, as they say in the old days (yeah, my kind of days...) put the metal on the pedal...

but i do love government service, even amidst all the dirty things you would encounter....

anyway, this is about my new album list. courtesy of government resources...

to all my friends...if there is something that you like... who knows...i might just..no, as Linus Torvald once said "Software is like sex, its better when its free." and though i understand fellow artists need the buck, i also need the sound.

will post other albums when they come. any request? drop me a msg on the msg box or email me - damonsteine@yahoo.com or damonsteine@gmail.com


ani di franco extra
Ani DiFranco - 1992 - Imperfectly
Ani DiFranco - 1994 - Out Of Range
Ani DiFranco - 1996 - Dilate
Ani DiFranco - 1997 - Living in Clip
Ani DiFranco - 1998 - Little Plastic Castle
Ani DiFranco - 2003 - Evolve
Ani DiFranco - 2004 - Educated Guess
Ani DiFranco - Like I Said Songs 1990-91
Beck - 2006 - The Information
Billie Holiday - 1942 - Billie's Blues
Billie Holiday - 1958 - Lady In Satin
Billie Holiday - The Legacy 1933-1958 (Disc 1)
Damien Rice - 2003 - O
Desden Dolls - 2004 - Dresden Dolls
Dresden Dolls - 2006 - Yes Virginia
Dresden Dolls - live at Lyons 2005
Ella Fitzgerald - Love Songs
Joni Mitchell - 2005 - Songs Of A Prairie Girl
Kings Of Leon - 2007 -Because Of The Times
Led Zeppelin - 1969 - I
Led Zeppelin - 1969 - II
Led Zeppelin - 1970 - III
Led Zeppelin - 1971 - IV
Led Zeppelin - 1973 - House of the Holy
Led Zeppelin - 1975 - Physical Graffiti I
Led Zeppelin - 1975 - Physical Graffiti II
Led Zeppelin - 1976 - Presence
Led Zeppelin - 1979 - In Through The Outdoor
Led Zeppelin - 2003 - How The West Was Won I
Led Zeppelin - 2003 - How The West Was Won II
Led Zeppelin - 2003 - How The West Was Won III
Queen Greatest Hits I
Queen Greatest Hits II
Regina Spektor - 2006 - Begin To Hope
REM - 1983 - Murmur
REM - 1984 - Reckoning
REM - 1985 - Fables Of The Reconstruction
REM - 1986 - Lifes Rich Pageant
REM - 1987 - Document
REM - 1988 - Green
REM - 1991 - Out Of Time
REM - 1992 - Automatic For The People
REM - 1994 - Monster
REM - 1996 - New Adventures In Hi-Fi
REM - 1998 - Up
REM - 2001 - Reveal
REM - 2004 - Around The Sun
Rolling Stones - 2002 - Forty Licks I
Rolling Stones - 2002 - Forty Licks II
Sean Lennon - 2006 - Friendly Fire
Sondre Lerche - 2007 - Phantom Punch
Suzanne Vega - 1998 - The Best Of
The Cure - 2001 - Greatest Hits
The Police - 1993 - Message in a Box (The Complete Recordings) I
The Police - 1993 - Message in a Box (The Complete Recording...
The Police - 1993 - Message in a Box (The Complete Recording...
The Police - 1993 - Message in a Box (The Complete Recording...
The Smiths - 1995 - Singles
The Velver Underground - 1986 - Another View
The Velvet Underground - 1969 - The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground - 1970 - Loaded
Tracy Chapman - 1988 - Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman - 1995 - New Beginning
Tracy Chapman - 2002 - Let It Rain
Vienna Teng - 2006 - Dreaming Through The Noise
Zucchero - 1997 - Greatest Hits
Zucchero - 2002 - Shake
Zucchero & Company


billie holiday - billies blues
billie holiday - lady in satin
Billie Holiday - The Legacy 1933-1958 (Disc 1)
Bob Dylan - 1974 - Blood On The Tracks
Bob Dylan - 1994 - MTV Unplugged
Bob Dylan - 2006 - Blues
Bob Dylan - 2006 - Modern Times
Damien Rice - 2002 - O
Damien Rice - 2006 - 9
Fiona_Apple - Live_at_the_Orpheum_11-08-97
Janis Joplin - 1968 - Cheap Thrills
John Lennon - 2005 - Working Class Hero I
John Lennon - 2005 - Working Class Hero II
Johnny Cash - 1994 - American Recordings
Johnny Cash - 2000 - American III - Solitary Man
Johnny Cash - 2002 - American IV - The Man Comes Around
regina spektor - 2006 - mary ann meets the gray diggers and ...
Zucchero - 1999 - Overdose d'Amore (The Ballads)


------------------

MISC Albums

Arcade Fire - 2007 - Neon Bible
Audioslave - 2002 - Audioslave
Black Crowes - 1990 - Shake Your Moneymaker
Coal Chamber - 1997 - Coal Chamber
Coal Chamber - 2002 - Dark Days
Coal Chamber - 2003 - Giving the Devil
Crazy Town - 1999 - The Gift of Game
Dave Matthews - 1996 - Crash
Dave Matthews - 1998 - Before These Crowded Streets
Devil Driver - 2003 - Devil Driver
Devil Driver - 2005 - The Fury of Our Maker's Hand
Disturbed - 2000 - The Sickness
Disturbed - 2002 - Believe
Disturbed - 2005 - Ten Thousand Fists
Fall Out Boy - 2005 - From Under The Cork Tree
Fall Out Boy - 2007 - Infinity on High
Fear Factory - 2001 - Digimortal
Guns N' Roses - 1987 - Appetite for Destruction
Guns N' Roses - 1988 - Lies
Guns N' Roses - 1991 - Use Your Illusion I
Guns N' Roses - 1991 - Use Your Illusion II
Guns N' Roses - 1993 - The Spaghetti Incident
Incubus - 1995 - Fungus Amongus
Incubus - 1997 - S.C.I.E.N.C.E
Incubus - 1999 - Make Yourself
Incubus - 2001 - Morning View
Joe Satriani - 1986 - Not of This Earth
Joe Satriani - 1987 - Surfing with The Alien
Joe Satriani - 1988 - Dreaming #11
Joe Satriani - 1989 - Flying in a Blue Dream
Joe Satriani - 1992 - The Extremist
Joe Satriani - 1993 - Time Machine studio cd
Joe Satriani - 1998 - Crystal Planet
Joe Satriani - 2002 - Strange Beautiful Music
Joe Satriani - time machine live cd
John5 - 2005 - Songs for Sanity
Metallica - 1983 - Kill 'Em All
Metallica - 1984 - Ride The Lightning
Metallica - 1986 - Master of Puppets
Metallica - 1988 - ..And Justice for All
Metallica - 1991 - Metallica
Metallica - 1996 - Load
Metallica - 1998 - Garage Inc. I
Metallica - 1998 - Garage Inc. II
Metallica - 2003 - St. Anger
Mudvayne - 2000 - L.D. 5.0
Mudvayne - 2001 - The Beginning of All Things to End
Mudvayne - 2002 - The End of All Things to Come
Mudvayne - 2005 - Lost and Found
NIN - 2007 - Year Zero
No Doubt - 1995 - Tragic Kingdom
Resident Evil - 2002 - Original Soundtrack
Resident Evil - 2004 - Apocalypse OST
Sevendust - 2007 - Alpha
Snot - 1997 - Get Some
Tool - 1991 - ToolShed (demo)
Tool - 1992 - Opiate
Tool - 1993 - Undertow
Tool - 1996 - Aenima
Tool - 2000 - Salival
Tool - 2001 - Lateralus
Tool - 2006 - 10000 days
ZZ Top - 1992 - Greatest Hits


Aerosmith - Get a Grip
Billy Joel - 2001 - The Essential Billy Joel I
Billy Joel - 2001 - The Essential Billy Joel II
Dashboard Confessional - 2001 - The Places You Have Come to ...
Dashboard Confessional - 2002 - MTV Unplugged
Dashboard Confessional - 2003 - A Mark, a Mission, a Brand, ...
Dashboard Confessional - 2003 - Swiss Army Romance [Bonus Tr...
Garbage - 1995 - Garbage
Garbage - 1998 - Garbage Ver. 2.0
Garbage - 2001 - Beautiful Garbage
Garbage - Rare Tracks
Hawthorne Heights - 2006 - If Only You Were Lonely Version A
Incubus - S.C.I.E.N.C.E
Metallica - 1997 - Reload
Metallica - 1999 - Remixes
Metallica - 1999 - S&M I
Metallica - 1999 - S&M II
My Chemical Romance - 2004 - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
My Chemical Romance - 2006 - The Black Parade
Pearl Jam - 1991 - Ten
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Greatest Hits
Soundgarden - 1991 - Badmotorfinger
The Killers - 2004 - Hot Fuss
The Killers - 2006 - Sam's Town


12 Stones - 12 Stones
300 - Tyler Bates
311 - GH 93 - 03
Audioslave - 2005 - In Exile
Blue October - 2006 - Foiled
Bob Dylan - 1993 - World Gone Wrong
Chris Cornell - 1999 - Euphoria Morning
Coal Chamber - 2004 - The Best of
Cranberries - The Best
Deftones - 2003 - Deftones
Dire Straits - 1979 - Communique
Dire Straits - 1988 - Money For Nothing
evansecence - fallen
Final Fantasy VIII Piano Collection
Ill Niño - 2001 - Revolution Revolucion
Ill Niño - 2003 - Confession
Ill Niño - 2005 - One Nation Underground
Incubus - 2006 - Light Grenades
inxs - switch
J-Pop
James Blunt - 2005 - Back to Bedlam
janis joplin anthology cd1
janis joplin anthology cd2
Joe Satriani - 1995 - Joe Satriani
Korn - Unplugged
led zeppelin - I
Linkin_Park_-_Minutes_to_Midnight-2007
lynyrd skynyrd
Mansun - 1997 - Attack of The Grey Lantern
Matchbox20 - 2000 - Mad Season
NFS Hot Pursuit 2 OST
Panic at the Disco - 2005 - A Fever You Can't Sweat Out
Pink Floyd - 1973 - The Dark Side Of The Moon
Pink Floyd - 1979 - The Wall
Queensryche - 1988 - Operation Mindcrime
Queensryche - 2006 - Operation Mindcrime II
Seether - 2005 - Karma And Effect
Sevendust - Best of
Sneaker Pimps - 1997 - Becoming X
Sneaker Pimps - 2002 - bloodsport
SoundGarden - 1994 - SuperUnknown
spawn
Staind - 2005 - Chapter V
stone sour - 2002 - stone sour
stone sour - 2006 - come what(ever) may
sublime - 1999 - greatest hits
The Crow - 1995 - Original Movie Soundtrack
the fray - 2005 - how to save a life
the offspring - 1994 - smash
thom yorke - 2006 - the eraser
Three Days Grace - 2006 - One X
Tori Amos - 1998 - From the Choirgirl Hotel
Tori Amos - Scarlet's Walk
Tori Amos - Strange Little Girls
Tori Amos - The Beekeeper
Tori Amos - Under the Pink
vertical horizon

A Letter to My Brother

A Letter to My Brother

Lazarusmoth,

It has been quite a while since we last saw each other. If I am not mistaken, it was a few days after your wedding day to sister amijan, the day I had to leave home, your honeymoon somehow grayed by the reason why I made a last call on both of your doorsteps.

And so, allow me to greet you, brother and sister, and of course, little Iel who is not little anymore. As always I greet you with the warmest of blessings, fondest memories, overflowing happiness.

You might be surprised that I am writing this now. I know. If there was something about our brotherhood, it was the almost no need for letters, that amidst the distance and the changing patterns of the clouds in the sky, we may have adapted, but we remained brothers as we always had, even if without a drop of common blood between our veins. I am very grateful for your brotherhood through all these years.

Anyway , you might be wondering as to what prompted me to write you. And so I will tell. I cannot help but remember how you once defined the difference in our poetry, at the same time defining the individual that each of us is. I have to admit, I have proudly called myself “the poet with burning hands” in memory of how you defined that in my poetry, I always had to plunge my hands into the fire, if only to know how the fire feels while you, if my memory serves me well, defined your works as if you are standing a few feet from the fire, not too near and not too far, but enough that by waving your hands, you would feel the heat of the flame, close and distant enough to melt the fangs of coldness. Nobody saw me as how I saw myself then, and for that I will always remain your brother, in sanity or otherwise.

Of yes, the reason why I am writing you this. I am coming to that.

I always knew things would change, but I never knew it would be like this. Or perhaps I did know it could end up like this, only that I did not want to think that I would ever have to undergo and endure such, let me say, drastic changes. And what are these particular changes, you might ask me.

It seems brother, that as planets and constellations follow their orbits, so must it seem with us. As how I see it, today, I have become who you were before, and you have become who I was once then. Allow me to explain. Its not that you are now the one with “burning hands” (I will always claim that title) but it seems that I who have always wanted to be close have learned the lessons that fire indeed can burn not only flesh and bone, but also the soul, even a soul as black and mine. And because of thus, I am now wary of the flames I once loved so much.I remember how defined your poetry, of how you saw the crazy world of entanglements, clinical, distant, and yet look at where you are now, entangled in a way I believe you never you would be.

I remember I made a promise that we would revisit a certain watering hole, even if it turns out to be a garbage dump, to remember how worried we were on that night, the follies of youth and despair, and how everything came out right the next day.

When I made that promise you asked of me, it was in conflict with what was then the theme of my life, which was death. I really do not know if you somehow asked me to make that promise so that I would not go on with my desire for eternal darkness. But whether you did or not, it does not matter. It’s a worthy request, especially that it comes from you brother. And yes, I would keep it.

You were the only person I knew who was comfortable calling me in both my names. And I am grateful for that. I suddenly remember, we also did promise to be each other’s Death Speakers ala Ender, right? And so, telling you about this would help you in your role as my Death Speaker (hehehehe, I am not going to apologize that I cannot be yours!).

And one day, a little kid named Jian might find his way to where you are. I hope that for the questions that he might ask, what I reveal now would help you answer them.

In heaven or hell (of such places really do exist), I remain, and so shall you remain, brothers.

damonsteine

...

I began my discovery of you

When my own traced the uncharted

Landscape of your sad eyes

They were there,

Open like nakedness

Roaming over familiar skies and horizons,

Yet sailing like a little boat

Towards some distant island

As my own eyes once did

The winds & my poor navigation

Brought me to the heart of the harbor

Who bears your form, & your name.

Cradling you

Between the arms of my eyes

I confess to a long hunger

To be cradled by your own

To witness your sad eyes

Smile at me

Smile for me

But your eyes are not mine

And though they are your own

I recognize the name

Of its sadness and hunger

Who would only reveal herself,

Naked as lovers do in the dark

When it has claimed the passion

It chose as its own

I know my eyes:

They will fall to the ground

To a darkness

In the presence

Of your absence

But,

I beg you

Let no more sadness reside

In the country of your eyes

For none will remain in mine.

Not for long, I pray.

In your absence

I only need

To hold heaven between my eyes,

And no matter how different

Our skies would be

I shall offer you a smile,

Knowing you have docked

In the harbor your soul,

Your sad eyes longed for

The memory of you would be

Like a star

While I am out

Here

There

Somewhere

Navigating wind & waters

On my own.

Confessions : Unearthing The Dead II

Confessions : Unearthing The Dead I

Confessions : My Downward Spiral

Confessions : My Downward Spiral

I honestly believe that I am going crazy.

But then, being able to think clearly about it, it would be safe for me to assume that I am still to be completely taken over by simple shapes and forms that have taken grotesque transformations as filtered by my ever eroding mind.

It would be no mistake that I be called selfish. I am, especially when it comes to the person who matters the most to me, whose existence I would like to ensure at the beginning of each day and at the end of each night: my own. Selfish perhaps, but then, I always pondered that if I do not have the capability to care for myself, to nurture myself, then how could I be able to do the same when it comes to other people? How could I say I love other people, especially women, if I could not love myself.

That is why, with the recent turmoil of my extended existence, bits and flakes of my personality falling like dandruff on the shoulder clothed in black, I am worried. Very, very much worried.

I have gone though the reasons, the justifications for all that are happening. Taking Responsibility. Yet the specter remains, the sadness, the loneliness, the almost utter helplessness at time grips me unlike any fear I have ever swallowed before. I find it somehow ironic, to understand those that needs to be understood and yet never being able to get away from the baggage that it brings.

I know, with certainty that this is inevitable. All I could do right now is slow things down, plug some leaks here and there to extend the inevitable breaking of the dam, so to speak. I cannot go yet, not at least with Project Life almost halfway within my reach.

Being here in Iligan for the past 2 years has been a great extension for me, a change of perspective. But as all things go, I knew there was a price to pay for this happiness, for the soft and silent moments when I could be my former self. I was afraid that the very things I got would be the very price I have to pay, and as it stands now, I am correct. I am to lose all that I have gained.

Still, it was a worthy trade.

I miss home. It dawned on me that for the love that I have for my Mother City, I might have started Project Life on some distant island, among strangers, but I believe that it is only fitting that I finish it where it all began.

I will be home. It’s just a matter of time.

Confessions : The Lessons I Have Learned (plus how they contribute to my madness)

Confessions : The Lessons I Have Learned (plus how they contribute to my madness)

Lessons. Like everyone else, I have had my share. I could even claim that I have been an attentive student.

Like the lesson I was taught when I first lied to my mom. She made me eat chili, the small ones, and I have to admit that while it was burning my lying mouth, sending my saliva into overdrive, I still haven’t had the time to compare its burning sensation to, lets say, hot lustful sex and pure pride and ego from making a woman orgasm multiple times, in successive waves. I was a kid then you know.

Or the lesson I was taught when I was spanked for the first time. I cannot remember the details, only that I shoved my baby sister, I guess she was nagging me about something and for the first time in my life, I experienced two horrors: my mom was angry at me and thus led to my first spanking. I was terrified. No, it was not from the pain: come to think of it, the spanking I gave were no more like pats, but there I was bawling, my eyes spitting teardrops like it was the end of the world, as if I was going be swallowed by the imaginary monsters I believed in then that existed in the dark. I would never forget that moment.

And I guess my mom learned her lesson too: I guess my cries terrified her so much that until now, that first spanking remains the first and last time she spanked me.

Lessons. I told you, I am an attentive student. Gifted with a mind capable of holding memories and everything else that comes to a child (you could point the finger to my mom: she fed me gerber, sustagen, cheese, apples, grapes from our own vineyard and if my memory does not fail me, I was a bonna kid, as well as an S-22 kid, the last brand leaving a strange aftertaste it my mouth, its name reminds me of what a missile should be named.)

If the Lesson would be on the subject of women, I can say, in all honesty and humility, that not only have I been an attentive one, but a star student as well. A very good one, I should say.

No, do not let the word “good” mislead you. By “good” it only, and can only mean that I have had bad episodes, “bad” lessons that, like flames, have ignited and seared past my skin, my flesh, my hot blood and dirty flesh, into each and every fiber of my memory, into the heart of my, well, that is if I have any, my black soul.

Still, I could say I have been and still good when it comes to women. From my four mothers, who wished me to learn all the good lessons about women, I have learned to love in a way that I can say is not only my own, but definitely at par with the great loves of history. I know no other way than to love a woman with the burning passion of, well, the chili (saliva/orgasm included, satisfaction guaranteed!).

Intensity 6.9, Hot, White, Pure Light.

I always took relationships as a good and eager student of life does, as if it was school, eager to learn the basic lessons of primary school, upgrading everything during the secondary years and armed and ready for the new rules of college, the third and final proving ground before graduation and real life, as real as that even if one could, one should stop asking for allowances. I breezed through all the levels of higher learning.

Only to get dropped out during the finals of the last year. My name, and my memories, stricken out like wrong answers, in red blood ink.

There is a lesson to be learned. Once, twice, even perhaps, though its shameful, if it had to be thrice. But why does it have to happen like this? There is even no need for me to count, to spell out there names for it would be the same, the record would still be unbroken, perfect.

Perhaps, it’s my fault, too proud to rewire my brain the way most people do and label everything as simple “part of life”. There is no excuse for the betrayal of trust. I know. Or perhaps its simply because, as much as I am guilty for my own betrayals, I do regret it, not just in thought, not just for a moment, that I live it, keep it alive, as a reminder of what I could do, and what I should learn never to do again.

There are a number of lessons that could be derived from these, and one of the most significant is that if I have learned anything at all about human nature, about how women, in all colors, shapes and sizes, smell and taste, that no matter how different and sweet their voices would be, they are all too human. That betrayal can only be born in the seeds of trust.

I guess I’m just so stupid, wanting to believe in the “goodness” that is in all of us. But then I know, for now, that I could not give up on that: for how could I believe I can find redemption if I have damned every one of them?

But there is a more pressing possible lesson that is there, lurking, waiting to reveal itself. The one lesson that I am afraid to learn, or perhaps in the madness that has become me, who knows I already have learned it:

Have I learned the lesson of betrayal so well that I have, in more ways than one and yet invisible to my own eyes because of self denial, finally learned to betray? Gifted as I am with some meager talents, have I learned how to cloth betrayal and pain in wings of pure, white feather?

That is a scary thought, I have to admit…

As if that’s not scary enough, my inability to rewire my head, of how I always remind myself of my own sins does not allow me to forget either. I could forgive, but then, who would I forgive if none of them even claimed to have done wrong. I might be wrong, but each of them must have felt that they have done their own god proud.

If so, I spit on their god.

My friends tell me that I should let go, and yet whenever I ask them if they know of something like memory surgery, if they could really go on remembering the light, shade and stroke of their memories (for memories are meant to be remembered, don’t you think so?) breathe in and honestly say that it doesn’t hurt, none have so far been able to answer me, except if you count the mumble and the change of subject matter as, technically, answers.

I know I could choose to see things like most people do, to take the easy way: to fool oneself because its so difficult to be honest, to lie because the truth is not always sweet, to forget for remembering does not only bring memories. It is not that I could not. I choose not to.

I swore I always would always be willing to pay the price for my choices, no matter how limited those choices might be. Perhaps that in itself is a sign of insanity. I paid, I pay, and will continue to do so, even if the payment rakes and flakes the fragile naked flesh of my sanity.

May I let the pen fall after, after I have nothing left to write.

What was it about again, lessons?!