On Writing #2

Okay, a confession: it all started with fan fiction.

It was two days before my 13th birthday. I think my father and I had a fight that evening, and in my anger, I grabbed a blank sheet of paper and my ballpen and wrote in my large, round handwriting, "I hate you!" I yelled... It was my first story about a girl with long brown hair and brown eyes who played the guitar. Her name was January Ann McGill and she lived in Florida. My sense of logic and facility of reasoning was still quite raw at that point in time; she had managed to score the $100 million jackpot because she lived with the Backstreet Boys. (Yes, I admit, I was a fan. And that is the understatement of my entire adolescent life.)

I wrote fan fiction about the Backstreet Boys from seventh grade until third year high school. I have about three large folders at home, filled with my handwriting - anywhere from bond paper to ruled yellow paper to intermediate pads - and spanning roughly two and a half "seasons" worth of stories, excluding all the "special episodes" and crossovers. A friend of mine, Karla Manlangit, also wrote these fan fics, and we used to do a lot of collaborations: I still have the ten-peso notebooks we used to write in. During recess and lunch, we would meet and talk about our plots and characters and agree on the direction our stories were taking. And in the manner of secret agents, the notebooks would be passed from one hand to another. Our "fans" - classmates and friends who faithfully followed our series - would stick small Post-It notes on the pages, commenting on the way we wrote the story. Sometimes, we would even do Mary Janes, including ourselves within the plot. Talk about writing metafiction.

After the Backstreet Boys, I became obssessed with The X-Files fan fiction. As far as I'm concerned, X-Philes are still the best fan fiction writers around: smart, intelligent, and strong writers who knew their characters and their storylines. Next are the Harry Potter writers, especially my favorite, Cassandra Claire, who also did the underground phenomena, The Very Secret Diaries of the Lord of the Rings. I bow down to her.

And now, in my hours of boredom and need, I turn to my old comfort, revisiting and re-reading fan fiction of my old fandoms, feeling nostalgic and borderline schizophrenic all at the same time. ^_^

This is a Photograph of Me - Margaret Atwood

It was taken some time ago.
At first it seems to be
a smeared
print: blurred lines and grey flecks
blended with the paper;

then, as you scan
it, you see in the left-hand corner
a thing that is like a branch: part of a tree
(balsam or spruce) emerging
and, to the right, halfway up
what ought to be a gentle
slope, a small frame house.

In the background there is a lake,
and beyond that, some low hills.

(The photograph was taken
the day after I drowned.

I am in the lake, in the center
of the picture, just under the surface.

It is difficult to say where
precisely, or to say
how large or small I am:
the effect of water
on light is a distortion

but if you look long enough,
eventually
you will be able to see me.)

On Writing #1

I miss that sudden rush of things clicking together when I write. Whether it was poetry or fiction, or an article due in the wee hours of the morning, I miss that moment when your heartbeat quickens and you lose all sense of self, of being who you are and just focus on the words that seemingly spill out of your fingers and onto the page. There used to be days when I would just sit down and write, without cause or care, except to release a torrent of words that were clamoring to get out of some obscure and inexplicable part of my body.

Now, I chose my words more carefully, wanting to derieve a certain kind of effect from the reader. I control the torrent, releasing just a mere trickle, enough to satiate the thirst but not enough to drown. For a reader to remember the taste, one must always withhold the best part, the part they most want to know, dangle it above them like a treat that they must work for. This is not cruelty on the part of the writer - this is knowing that, in the end, the satisfaction of the reader must be met.

However, to be in control is to master your own impulses, to be discreet when one appears in print, to realize that words have permanence. Each written word is another chip in the stone of immortality, that cliche that binds sculptors and writers together. I write about myself, but only to a certain degree. The trick is to never let your reader know where the line is between fiction and reality.

Fragment #2

This is the part where we try not to break hearts.

-- I'm sorry, but I don't think I can talk to you anymore.

She looks at him in amazement, her fingers freezing in the act of curling around the handle of her knife. Her steak was already cold, the sauce congealing like lumps of broken soil around the thick slab of meat.

-- What do you mean?

-- Just that.

He stood up, wobbling slightly from one bottle of San Mig. His napkin dropped on the floor, crumpled white sadness floating gently towards the linoleum. She wanted to pick it up, fold it up properly and place it back on the table, but he was standing in the way.

-- Goodbye.

-- Wait...

Letters Never to be Sent #2

Somehow, this all saddens me, the finality of things.

I didn't think it would go this far. A friend advised me on silence, and so I will just keep quiet regarding the accusations you throw in my direction. But I thought you knew me better than that.

But I've only given up on three people in my entire life, and it saddens me to think that you're the third person. Because I cannot deal with your issues anymore, because you are hurting everyone who has ever loved you or cared for you by pushing them away. Can't you see that? Can't you see that you're building a wall around yourself, keeping everyone out, that you're climbing the ivory tower of your own making? One by one, people are disappering. Did you notice that? Are you going to claim exclusivity of friendships now? The less friends the better, because you think they're loyal?

You disappointed me. And yes, it was personal, because I put myself on the line to help you. I didn't know you would do that to me. It was a betrayal of sorts, and I don't know if you've ever realized how difficult it was to forgive you because of that. Because not only did you put my reputation and my name in jeopardy, you also delayed an entire publishing company's project. Do you realize how much money and time was wasted on that, or the tempers that flared and the angry words that were thrown in the air? No, you don't. Because you disappeared. You hid from the world while we were busy picking up the shit you left behind. Hell yeah, it was personal.

But that was a long time ago. And yes, that was forgiven already.

What really gets my goat right now is the way you are dealing with people right now. If you want to be exonerated from your accusations, be transparent. Face the people you're accusing right now - harap harapan na dapat ito, kung ganyan ka rin lang katapang mag-akusa ng tao. Because if you don't even have the decency to tell whatever it is to my face, then who are you and what right do you have to tell me that I am wrong and that you are right?

Friends don't do that. Friends never do that. You had my loyalty once, and my life. You had that. You held it in your hands. I trusted you.

I'm just sorry that things had to end this way.

Poetry #2

Round Robin

This poem will begin with a statement of in
activity within the first two lines. Usually,
I address someone else; it will not do to let
a poet ramble on, like a train chugging beyond
the last station, pretending that there are still railings
beneath its wheels. The tension within the poem,
in this case, is fear – I am afraid to tell you
what I want, because I do not want to drive
past the 24-hour McDonalds’ at the corner
of the highway and the street, wondering why
I never had the courage to go inside.

In other cities, there will always be someone
who looks exactly like you, searching
for the lost lines on his palm, asking the air
why Point A never reached Point B. Somewhere
in this poem, there will also be an image
of the moon: an eye watching over us, omnipotent
and pale, wanting a closer look but never able
to do more than dip an invisible finger
into the saltwater stretches of the world.
You will want to ask me what it all means;
you know I cannot answer questions. Everything
rests on the silence that curls around
each word, carefully chosen, shells
scattered on an abandoned beach.

You tell me that I am contradictory. This
imagined conversation occurs in a coffeeshop,
where I’ve had my heart broken every other month.
You’ve always suspected it was my tears
that made it bitter. That is called a metaphor,
which should have run throughout this entire
poem, in order to fulfill the requirements
of organic unity. But there is nothing unified
about love, that theme repeated by every writer
of every age. All feelings are fragmented,
inexplicable, worn strands of twine connecting
the last boat to the rickety pier, bobbing up and down
on the shallows, where we will sit even after
we have said all that we wanted to say.

Maturity?

Gyah. I didn't ask for this. I was happy being quiet, without worlds overlapping.

*must be mature*

Like I said, my life is weird. Wild nights are my glory.

Some Thoughts on Romance

We all want it, and yet we all wonder what to do with it once we get it.

There's this little niggling feeling that we want something so amazing that it's almost an impossibility. We want a love that will last forever. A friend once told me, "Forever isn't that long." But if you think about it, it is. And sometimes you wonder why it takes so long for the enxt one to come along. We are in love with the idea of love itself.

It's almost been a year since we broke up. Like I said, strange patterns - last year, at around this time, I was also away from the city, writing. He was also the one who fetched me from the airport. This time around, when I asked the same favor from him, he said, "Yes, but only because you mean that much to me. That means no dramatics." It was a funny deal, but I agreed. I suppose that means that he realizes it, too.

Before, I used to think that I had closed to book on us. It ended with him falling in love with another man, and me living alone. Somehow, in my mind, I had hammered the first nail on the coffin of spinsterhood. After all, I'm not exactly the girl anyone could fall in love with. Everyone looks for the perfect person. I'm just looking for someone who can make me happy. And that's a difficult thing to ask for in a person. And I'm not quite sure that there's someone out there who's willing to give me that.

So here I am, wondering what will happen, wondering if there's someone else who will come along. There's a certain sort of detachment that comes with putting your heart back together - it makes you more cautious, more wary of people. It makes you distrust the very idea of romantic love, as if it were a farce to be played out, our generation's version of Santa Claus. (Pardon me, but I just watched Kate and Leopold.)

But a part of me doesn't want to be like that. I'm still willing to wait, and I'm willing to hope, and maybe all I want is a happy ending for my heart. It's gone beyond just wanting to get over him because I did get over him without getting into a rebound relationship. And I don't want it as an ego boost. I want to see if I can still believe again, if I can actually go through the motions again and see where we went wrong and we went right. i don't want him to be the beginning and the end of all things. There has to be something more than this.