Letters and Numbers

I haven't really posted anything public in quite some time, owing to the rather delicate nature of certain topics that only a select few can read. But lo and behold, I post once again. And of course, things will be numbered because I'm too lazy to write connecting paragraphs to each one.

1. So I'm apparently going to the Avril Lavigne Best Damn Tour concert on Sunday. O_o Now, you have to note two things: (a) I am NOT an Avril fan, and (b) I am only doing this because it's someone's birthday and I wanted to give a gift that is more than just the usual cake/ice cream/sweetmeat. I've always believed that part of what makes performances (concerts, musicals, etc.) great is the fact that you are paying for an experience, as opposed to something mechanical, something that can be put on repeat and allowed to go on and on and on until it's almost dead. So I would like to gift the birthday celebrant the experience, since they are just diehard fans of Avril and, despite all protestations, would have really wanted to watch if they had the cash. So tadah! Wish granted.

*pokes fingers through holes in pockets*

2. Yes, I have heard of the Eraserheads reunion concert and the surreal events that happened after. I would have seriously wanted to be there - the Eraserheads was such a defining Pinoy band that forever shaped the direction of Filipino music as well as the musical tastes of a generation. And they're timeless: it's been ten years, give or take, since they were together as a group and yet my younger sister Bea is hopelessly devoted to Ely Buendia and knows more Eraserheads songs than me. And she wasn't even in grade school when the band split up! It's really boggles the mind. And as for myself, there are still a number of Eraserheads songs that I will never get out of my head, including the following:

- my baby brother Louie singing "Overdrive" when I was in fourth grade (so that made him in first grade) during the Dans New Year's Eve celebrations. Do you guys remember that? Louie was in his funny blue shirt and it almost looked like he was eating the mic at Tito Butch's house. Oh yeah, and Cutterpillow was our first album, when they were still selling cassette tapes for something like 60 pesos a pop.

- Lin, Jilly, Kla, and myself singing "Sembreak" and "Pare Ko" in a deserted gym the night of the Turnover Ceremony in fourth year high school. I still remember Kla and Jilly on the stage while Lin held up a video camera and my friends sang to me because I was leaving for college the following schoolyear. Incidentally, this was also the year that Lin broke her ankle because of...certain dance moves which I cannot detail here.

- I remember watching the video of "Ang Huling El Bimbo" and thinking, Oh my God, this video is seriously fucked up and it's FANTASTIC. This was perhaps the first locally made music video that really made the hairs on my arms stand up and a delicious shiver run through my spine.

And because it's the -ber months, this is the song running through my head:



So take a bite. It's all right. ^_^

3. And I'm finally done with Avatar: The Last Airbender (thank you Hiyas!). I've already read the spoilers and even saw "The Ember Island Players" on YouTube, but nothing beats watching "Sozin's Comet" just for the sheer awesomeness that is Aang. Seriously, they delivered what was perhaps one of the best finales for a series ever. Everyone played their parts, were fantastic, and I am so happy that Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko managed to make everything cohere together without truly giving anything away and still retaining the precious balance of humour and emotional resonance that made Avatar more than just a kid's cartoon series, but a true piece of storytelling genius. And I'm sorry Zutara shippers but Kataang will beat you in all their happy, mind-blowingly sappy glory. ^_^

I read somewhere that true shippers will see that the OTP of the entire thing was really Appa/Momo...which disturbs me a lot. O_o

Oh, and here's a teaser clip of Book 4: Air of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It's aptly titled "Forbidden Love".

4. Finally: Happy 25th Birthday (tama ba?) Aster! ^_^ I'm sorry I'm not there for the dinner and the sleepover (meron ba?) but know that you're in my heart and in my mind. Thank you for crazy get-togethers in college and for giving us what's now known as "mga kwentong Aster" - for a fuller compilation, please look for Roja - and for sleepovers where you disregard all concepts of personal space and use me as a pillow (which is why no one likes sleeping beside you), for being there to comfort me in CCHQ when I broke up with my first boyfriend and couldn't eat fotr two days and you and Meia and to force-feed me food, and for all the bunny craziness and hoping that your latest pet survives the curse. Thank you for providing us with optimism and hope even during our most Sylvia Plath-like days and for persevering in law school where none of us ever dared finish. May you have everything good that you deserve in this life. ^_^

Believe it or not, wala tayong picture na magkasama, so kayo na lang muna ni Meia dito. Ayan, tingnan mo, nakapikit ka pa. ^_^

Vignette: Oubliette

The candle flame flickers into the shape of a swan, the tip seemingly darting forward, beak-like, catching an invisible fish. Another gust of wind, and the flame gently bends forward like a bamboo stalk giving way to the breeze, then the outline changes again. This time, it is a silken strand, twisted away from the cloth, floating away on a gust of forgotten summer air. Outside the window, the air is thick with darkness.

She curls up on her pallet beneath the last window of the house, pretending that she is a mouse, a cricket, a small creature not daring to breathe. Around her, she catches sight of an overturned desk, a scattering of books across the dust-carpeted floor. She wants to reach out and touch them, but she knows that one tiny motion could alert them to her. She remembers what her father said before he left to join the men outside their home. “Stay here, Alexa, just stay here. I’ll come back for you.”

She was just twelve back then. That was three years ago.

Water pools in a dark puddle just beside her. Occasionally, she is brave enough to pull herself forward and take a sip of the dank liquid, her tongue slightly burning with the metallic flavor. She remembers the ocean, once, when she is lucid enough to remember anything: the rush of the waves towards the shore, the crash of foam and saltwater against her skin, pushing and pulling her towards the womb of the world. She can remember the sting of the salt and sand in her eyes, the limpid reflection of the setting sun across the horizon bordered by mountains on both ends, the cove seemingly belonging to another universe altogether.

She remembers her mother telling her that she was special, smoothing her dark hair back from her face. Now, she has forgotten that she has hair, that the thin strands of rope that occasionally obscures her vision is really what remains of what people used to say was her crowning glory.

Her body has shrunk to mere bones, her skin paper thin against her skeleton. Her stomach has become a cave, swallowing light. Her eyes have continually deteriorated, moving her away from the pinprick of illumination that was her candle towards the deeper shadows. She has forgotten why her light has remained the way it has for all those years, or if there was really a candle in front of her. She has forgotten where to draw the line between her reality and her memory.

But she remembers the day they came. She relives it every day

Prose Poem # 264

Without a doubt

there is nothing more difficult to write than a poem about the discovery of love. How, for example, to write about the surface: the regularity of meals, the occassional movie, the long conversations about nothing? Well, not nothing precisely, but then what is so important about this quiet unraveling of history and presence, like a discovering a particularly glittering vein of water from a desert bedrock, the liquid sluicing away the centuries of dust and stone, darkly coloring the ground? We feed each other information in trickles: your birthday, the worst book you’ve read, the greatest rock band in the world. We wait for the ocean to arrive, swallowing the dry land, lapping at our feet. You sip your coffee and stare silently into the black depth, your fingers splayed like sunrays across the polished table. I clink my spoon against the china. Every time, we chip away a little more of the layer, patient for the day when we arrive at the center of the world. This is what we do every Friday night, feeding this constant need to unearth more. Lovers are like archeologists. They are the destroyers of worlds.