To The Tito I've Never Known: Musings and Stories on the National Day of Mourning

Today, over sandwiches and coffee, I talked with my Nanay for a bit about what it was like back then, and why she had so much fear towards Muslims. 

It started a few hours ago, when we watched a live broadcast of the necrological services on TV. Nanay, (actually my aunt, but she practically raised me, so I call her so) a frail-looking but still surprisingly strong woman of 60 years of age, had such strong reactions against the encounter but I couldn't help but ask myself why. She told me herself a few hours later over merienda that when she was a child, her brother was ambushed and kidnapped by Muslim raiders in the mountains. My Tito bebot, the Tito i had never known, never came back down since.

Saying Goodbyes

Break the Cycle, You + Me

A few weeks into 2015, I said goodbye to a friend.

To those of you who've come into my room, you might notice several things. You might notice the black and red marker writings on the inside and outside of the closets, a thing i started one late night into my junior year, when a scene from an anime series kind of inspired me to do so. You might also notice the large pile of books stacked haphazardly in one corner. Maybe you'd look at the shelves above the mirror and notice the rows of Goosebumps books. Or maybe you might notice the assorted things i've crammed into this wall over here. It's kind of a medley of all the things i've found throughout more or less 9 years, to be honest. There's countless CDs (broken, mind you) of movies and music, some notices and meetings i've had a hand in officiating, some k-zone posters from my elementary days, an old map of UP from when I took the UPCAT and even a calendar of Our Lady of Buensuceso - the patron saint of my old high school alma mater.

Numbers I

NP: Signal Fire, Johnoy Danao's Cover

Numbers I

1. My phone has ran out of juice. A part of me wants to charge it, but a  part of me doesn't. Knowing the phone can't ring is better than hearing the phone unringing. Unringing - is that a real word? I mean it like the absence of a ring, this word unringing. But somehow, it does not feel like the absence of a ring, but rather the undoing of it, or the not doing. The reverse.

2. I told myself these shoes can cross distances - seven-year leagues, depths of nineteen fathoms, walls of fifteen feet. What I failed to realize though was the soles, the strings and the cloth that binds them all together, are at the mercy of all the things inside.

3. Sobrang gulo. Masyadong maraming linya ang umiikot ikot. Mga takot masaktan, mga takot manakit. Sa isang perpektong mundo marahil, nabubuhay ang mga masasayang katha ng ating isipan, hindi dahil sa kanilang paraan ng pamumuhay, kung hindi sa paraan ng kanilang pakikitungo.

4. The other day, I was at the university, getting my tickets for an ceremony I neither wish to attend or discuss. I sat at one of the benches overlooking the main building and thought about how fragile everything is. I could've sat underneath one of those trees inside the lane - i could never tell which one was ours - but it felt wrong, somehow. Like if i did that, it would only be a perverse imitation of what had happened. I didn't stay to catch the sunrise, nor the lighting of the trees. For now, it was enough that I was near that place, not within it.

5. I have a brother who is so disorganized, he always forgets to flush the toilet. One day, as i come home early from a day outside, I peer inside the bowl and see the edges of a book, the silhouette of a cloth, and a castle made of popsickle sticks - his project for the last grading. I see all these things and possibly more - all of the things he wants to flush away.

6. Zippers. It's funny how they work, and it's strange how people haven't found a way to incorporate it into the human body.