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April 14, 2007

Stepping Backward

Adrienne Rich
   
 
Good-by to you whom I shall see tomorrow,
Next year and when I'm fifty; still good-by.
This is the leave we never really take.
If you were dead or gone to live in China
The event might draw your stature in my mind.
I should be forced to look upon you whole
The way we look upon the things we lose.
We see each other daily and in segments;
Parting might make us meet anew, entire.

You asked me once, and I could give no answer,
How far dare we throw off the daily ruse,
Official treacheries of face and name,
Have out our true identity? I could hazard
An answer now, if you are asking still.
We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering solitude
Out on this stony planet that we farm.
The most that we can do for one another
Is let our blunders and our blind mischances
Argue a certain brusque abrupt compassion.
We might as well be truthful. I should say
They're luckiest who know they're not unique;
But only art or common interchange
Can teach that kindest truth. And even art
Can only hint at what disturbed a Melville
Or calmed a Mahler's frenzy; you and I
Still look from separate windows every morning
Upon the same white daylight in the square.

And when we come into each other's rooms
Once in awhile, encumbered and self-conscious,
We hover awkwardly about the threshold
And usually regret the visit later.
Perhaps the harshest fact is, only lovers–
And once in a while two with the grace of lovers–
Unlearn that clumsiness of rare intrusion
And let each other freely come and go.
Most of us shut too quickly into cupboards
The margin-scribbled books, the dried geranium,
The penny horoscope, letters never mailed.
The door may open, but the room is altered;
Not the same room we look from night and day.

It takes a late and slowly blooming wisdom
To learn that those we marked infallible
Are tragi-comic stumblers like ourselves.
The knowledge breeds reserve. We walk on tiptoe,
Demanding more than we know how to render.
Two-edged discovery hunts us finally down;
The human act will make us real again,
And then perhaps we come to know each other.

Let us return to imperfection's school.
No longer wandering after Plato's ghost,
Seeking the garden where all fruit is flawless,
We must at last renounce that ultimate blue
And take a walk in other kinds of weather.
The sourest apple makes its wry announcement
That imperfection has a certain tang.
Maybe we shouldn't turn our pockets out
To the last crumb or lingering bit of fluff,
But all we can confess of what we are
Has in it the defeat of isolation–
If not our own, then someone's, anyway.

So I come back to saying this good-by,
A sort of ceremony of my own,
This stepping backward for another glance.
Perhaps you'll say we need no ceremony,
Because we know each other, crack and flaw,
Like two irregular stones that fit together.
Yet still good-by, because we live by inches
And only sometimes see the full dimension.
Your stature's one I want to memorize–
Your whole level of being, to impose
On any other comers, man or woman.
I'd ask them that they carry what they are
With your particular bearing, as you wear
The flaws that make you both yourself and human.
 
 

So me

Ruphas the Terrible People Iced: Twenty Car Bombs Planted: Sixteen Favorite Weapon Switch-Blade Arms Broken: Six Eyes Gouged: Thirty Two Tongues Cut Off: Seven Biggest Enemy: Mickey Z Get Your HITMAN Name AWSOME-GAME

Carlos, it was nothing.

April 7, 2007

Carlos, it was nothing

just soft rain, rare tulips

shading my head, bursting with radiant misnomers;

a look, a silent gaze that, for a moment, can be

mistaken for salvation. It was

nothing. Just a walk in the beach, a summer's

worth of bleeding. It was nothing

like your fingertips, grazing the hem of

my skirt, chasing sorrows out of mornings. Nothing like your laughter,

mixed with mine. Or, when you are near,

the confusion of which heartbeat is yours.

Chapter 7

April 5, 2007

I am looking at a tall glass. I am not going to say if it's half-full or half-empty because I hate that witticism. I look at the time. He is late.

I tap the edge of the spoon on the glass. Tink tink. I am bored and do not have time to waste.  

Last year was different. Last year was rainy. Like the day we met, for instance. I was almost soaked to my skin because the place where he said he'd meet me was so far, I had to take three trips from where I was then staying. When I got off the taxi, he wasn't there. I hesitated going up because 1) I did not have a ticket on me 2) there were a lot of his artsy fartsy friends lounging on chairs, smoking cigarettes in the rain. They looked frightfully ridiculous so I decided to disassociate myself lest I run into someone I knew (which I highly doubted).

I was disappointed at first because he looked so normal. But then he took me upstairs and literally shook me dry. IN front of all the raindrenched smoking farts (all of whom apparently decided to come up and make use of their common sense). I have never received such open affection from a complete stranger.

Then afterwards, the dance. I've never seen so many dancing poets before. But the Beatles were on and strangely, he said, here's your song. I hear the first lines of 'do you want to know a secret?' Dwarfed as I was under his thick coat, I could hear him humming along.

And it did not seem real at that point but I told myself, I will not knock this. I will not overanalyze this and shred it to pieces until there is nothing left.

But because we were then products of desertion, we could not hurt the other. No one voiced out what the end might be like, unlike many of my former lovers. We went to this gallery and that, with him trying his best to disentangle himself from every situation that may involve long discourses on subjects unknown to me while I tried my best to stay in the shadows. But most days, we preferred being alone. Behind a library. Under a tree. Reading books while crossing bridges (something that no one has ever done with me). Sometimes, I would catch him humming You'll never know how much I really love you… You'll never know how much I really care…

Those were perfect days. We were A MURAKAMI NOVEL!!!! I was A MUSE!!!!! Minutes filled with concocting lovelorn poetry in my name or bits and pieces of songs written in bright pink post its- stuck in the corners of gnarly bus seats, left on chairs, thrown in the wind. And nobody knows that they were all about me.

But I run away from things I am afraid of. Perhaps he knew this about me, perhaps not. But my mind told me that these things happened in novels and we were just another one of those stories I hate where everything is distorted and hopless and everyone ends up running into themselves.

One night,  when we were having a "It's your movie. No, it's mine!" (his idea, of course) night, we decided to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's.  When it came to the part where Holly Golightly ran after Paul under the rain, he turned to me and lay his head on my shoulder. His head felt heavy, thick with curls. Minutes after, I hear him snoring.

Next morning, I ran away. Ran as fast as my legs would carry me. Mamang Pandesal, the bread vendor looked at me with horror as I plummeted towards him but I did manage to miss him at the last minute. My eyes were blurry from sleep. Where to go? I do not remember what I did after that.

A year passes. Sometimes, he would remember to say hello and the call would end abruptly, like all our other endings did. There were days when he was especially happy and say:

Did you receive my poem?

What poem?

I sent it. Express mail. And this time, I put your name on it. I specifically said that it was meant for you.

What poem?

I could almost imagine him smiling. You will get it because it is yours. All those words, for once, yours.

And I would cry silently in my open hand.

———–

But it is April again. I am waiting for him, like I said earlier, in a now almost empty restaurant.  Everything seems dimmer because it is the afternoon and the blinds are drawn.  When I pick up the phone, I hear his voice.

I'm sorry. I can't make it. Are you there already?

Yep. Just got in.

That's a lie.

What does it matter? Why aren't you coming anyway?

Because.

Okay. Have it your way, then. So when?

I dunno. Maybe next summer?

You can bet your rat's ass I won't be available for that one.

I have some things to attend to.

You know that I do, too. But where am I now?

Silence.

Please come.

It is seconds before I realize that he is not longer there. I stare at my phone for a while, put it in my bag and leave.

——————–

Two days after, I buy a newspaper on the way home from the market. It is Sunday, after all. I feel thirsty and hungry and think about what to cook for later. I smooth out the paper as best as I can. On the front page, beneath an article about an expose on a senatoriable, I see his face. I see the words:

 Writer missing!

I feel disembodied for a while, as if my soul has run off ahead of me. I reel a little and  decide to read on before I panic.The newsbeat says that he has been missing for three days now. Everything is being done to track him down but there is no sign of him anywhere. His family does not know where he is. His friends are all shaking their heads. His current girlfriend was crying during their interview with her.

After all these accounts, they run a short backgrounder on him. Simple kid who got good reviews, all of which eventually persuaded some hotshot organization to nominate him for an international award. No political leanings. No organizations. Clean, smooth record.

I feel my knees wobble a little. I am alarmed by the heat. My shoulders feel hurt, as if I've just been sunbathing.I hear a strange humming and then nothing at all.

________

Did you thank her?

Of course I did. What do you take me for? I even paid her 5 pesos.

So are you saying that I'm worth 5 pesos?

Oh shut up. Be grateful for something, for once. Here's a cuppa.

Thanks.

I walk past my brother and prop the pillows up on the sofa with my free hand. I put the cup of coffee down on the table I lie down with my eyes open.

He shuffles towards me. I close my eyes a bit, remembering what I tell him about shuffling. He never listens.

Are you okay?

I guess.

What happened out there?

Nothing.

He stares me full in the face. Should I worry about you?

No.

Okay.

He goes to his room and I hear his light switch click. I listen to him preparing for bed. I stare at the light and think about him, about me, about nothing really.

I go to my room and take my books off the shelves. I first arrange them alphabetically, then rearraange them into no particular order. Next, I smooth their jackets out and take care to fix the dogearred corners. I stare and stare at them until my eyes feel tired and heavy. Then I open each one, trying to find favorite passages and leaving them that way. So many words. All useless now, it seems. Even if I scream these words aloud, it won't make him come and sit with me. And stay.

I whisper, I won't run. I am tired. Please come back. I say these phrases over and over again to make them true for him, to make them summon him out of the void where I cannot follow.

story of my life

April 3, 2007

You know what's wrong with you, Miss Whoever-you-are? You're chicken, you've got no guts. You're afraid to stick out your chin and say, "Okay, life's a fact, people do fall in love, people do belong to each other, because that's the only chance anybody's got for real happiness." You call yourself a free spirit, a "wild thing," and you're terrified somebody's gonna stick you in a cage. Well baby, you're already in that cage. You built it yourself. And it's not bounded in the west by Tulip, Texas, or in the east by Somali-land. It's wherever you go. Because no matter where you run, you just end up running into yourself. - Paul, Breakfast at Tiffany's