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Ladies and gents, all future updates and creative work will be posted on Endophora.com.

The essays, short stories, and poems already posted here will remain accessible here, but most of them have already been migrated to the 'Musings' section of Endophora.com.

Thanks for your continued patronage of this humble (well, in some ways, at least) writer's work!

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Saudade VII: The Signs

Looking back, the signs were all there.

There were days in the years before that had left her crippled and weak, a shell of who she had been. In those days, she couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. In those days, she could barely recognize herself in the mirror, and in those days, everything was a blur.

Looking back, the signs were all there.

That connection she’d felt with the imagined, with the imaginary, with the things her mind had concocted from a mixture of memory and fantasy, it should’ve told her of her fate. Those days spent in the wilderness, speaking in tongues with her heart aflame – they said more about her than she cared to recognize.

“For a smart kid, you think with your heart too much. Remember that. The next time someone comes along, saying that they'll change for you, that you changed them, that you saved them, that they need you, don't believe that. 'Cause what it all comes down to is if they really need you, they'll show it to you. Don't rush into love. That shit takes time, and 20, 30, 40 years may not be enough.”

Jesus, she’d heard it all before. She thought she’d finally learned, but no.

It started with a small, indistinct crack. Like somehow, the cogs in the back of her mind had started turning. There was clarity, but her clarity wasn’t like the clarity of others. There was an epiphany, but her epiphany was everybody else’s doubt.

She blends in, another mindless worker. She blends in with the crowds and wears the same colors, walks the same paths. But in her mind, ideas exploded and overpowered each other. She disagrees with herself and nourishes self-doubt. Her knees buckle under the pressure. There’s an audible snap! and she’s plunged under the ice.

Looking back, the signs were all there.

It’s what everyone says, as they watch her go under. But by then, it’s too late.

They’re winning, she’d tell herself in the mirror, on those days that she could barely recognize even just the lines on her face. They’re winning and we can’t let them, she’d say.

They’d thought that it was a glimmer of hope in the dust, her light in the tunnel. They were right.

They’re winning, she’d tell herself, taking a step back from what was real, or what she thought was real, to where things wouldn’t matter, to where the cogs were turning, to the wilderness.

She’d follow the signs, and she knew she’d find herself there, that person who was lost in those days in the years before. It didn’t matter how long it would take. 20, 30, 40 years. She knew exactly where she was going.

There was no looking back. The signs were all there.

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Breakfasts We’ll Remember in 2070 part 3

“No one. Not even important.”

The words cut through her like a hot knife through butter. But it didn’t hurt, oddly enough. Maybe it was because it wasn’t supposed to? Because it had been years, of course, and what did she expect after everything she put him through?

But she knew that he’d told her about her. He would’ve had to eventually, one way or another, even if it was just through, “That’s all in the past, and she doesn’t matter now.”

She would walk around carrying that burden, but it was fine now, at least, that they were finally moving on with their lives. It was a step in the right direction, and it was probably what she needed, if she ever wanted to find any peace. It was all she needed, to hear that she was “No one. Not even important.”

She takes her cup of coffee and sits down at a seat near the window and watches him share breakfast with that girl he’s been seeing for past few months (or years, it’s all about perspective, really). He seems genuinely happy, and that pit in her stomach that had been wishing that, somewhere, deep down, he really wasn’t, slowly shrunk into something that left a bitter taste in her mouth.

They’d said their salty goodbyes years ago, but it felt like she hadn’t let go until now. Not until she’d heard him call her “No one. Not even important.”

She bites down on her lower lip to stifle something nobody should ever see in public, and he smiles at his date, happy, content, and completely unaware of the girl falling to pieces a few feet away.

25 Lives, by Tongari

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Tequila Sunsets

Dearest friend,

You know I love you and that I always will.

These past months have pulled us apart, and I now look back at the past we shared with the rose-tinted glasses we could never afford to don. Our past was spontaneous, slick like the blade of a knife, and we wasted no time going from one peak to the next. Looking back was never an option, and regrets were short-lived.

Dearest friend, we were wrong on so many levels. We buried our regrets in laughter and practiced nonchalance, and convinced ourselves that we were invincible. They were always right – all it takes to be happy is to convince yourself of the fact – and convince ourselves we did. We listened to ourselves and no one else, and made a truth that was all our own.

This truth crumbles as soon as you open your eyes. As the sun blinds you and clears away the fumes, you realize that we were wrong, and the mountains we were climbing were nothing but graves being dug.

You’re hardier than I am. You’ve been doing it for much longer, keeping up appearances and drowning your worries away.

But I worry that you may be slipping.

A slap on the wrist will do you no good – I’ve learned at least that from the time we spent together – and I’m forced to the sidelines as my words will do more harm than good. But I can’t bear to watch you slip further into the dark.

This emptiness in you – the one you’ll never admit – it can’t be appeased by any amount of alcohol or drugs. An infinite number of lovers will never make up for the ones you lost, or the ones you never had. No amount of compliments or rides home with acquaintances will get you where you want to be.

People will continue to come and go. At the end of the day, you’ll just be another face in the crowd, another drunk passed out at the bar, another junkie bragging about the trip. The truth is, and though I hate to admit it, your brilliance has pretty much faded for me too.

I still struggle with it now, with that emptiness we tried so hard to cover up with our smiles, that emptiness we wanted to ignore so bad it drove us to prefer blackouts over dreams. Some nights, it seems worse than before, but I take comfort in knowing that it’s real, and that I know it’s real.

Looking back, to us, was never an option, and it’s easy to forget how we were before all the spontaneity and practiced nonchalance. We listened to ourselves and no one else, and these rose-tinted glasses can’t hide what the truth we created for ourselves was.

We were young and we were foolish, and I can’t hold your hand through it again.

Someday, the sun will clear the haze for you as well, and you’ll be gasping for air as the last clump of dirt is shoveled into that grave. I promise, I’ll be there to help pull you out then, but for now, I’ll be one of those people, coming and going, faintly remembering you as one of those faces in the crowd.

[czarm]

Tunnel Vision

She’s wringing her hands, standing next to you. The train’s taking an awful long time today.

“Maybe there’s been an accident,” She chirps.

You glance at her, then at the tracks, and at the point where they disappear into the horizon. There are a couple more people on the platform now, and it’s starting to get a little bit crowded.

She looks around. The other platform is getting crowded too. “What if someone died again? Remember that time someone jumped in front of a train? They had to close off the stations for hours.”

You grow a little uncomfortable, as the people close by glance at her.  You want to reprimand her for being so nonchalant, but you know she won’t listen. “If that were the case, they wouldn’t have people waiting on the platforms now, would they?” You say.

She purses her lips, and stands on her heels. She’s bored. You can tell. Everybody can tell.

Two minutes of silence go by, as more people filter onto the platform. She takes a deep breath, and you brace yourself.

“Do you wanna take a bus?” She asks you.

You pause, evaluating your options. Never mind that you were standing on a crowded platform with hundreds of people, that you got no slept last night because she kept waking up in the middle of the night and making you keep watch while she went to the bathroom (keep watch from what exactly, you would never know), and never mind that taking the bus was the plan anyway, right from the start.

Your blood is boiling. You can literally feel your eyeballs melting from the rage.

You put on a plastic smile (and pray to god that doesn’t melt too) and turn to her. “Do you wanna take a bus?”

She purses her lips again.

Minutes later, you’re pushing past the people on the platform, making your way to the exits. As you pass the turnstiles, a train zooms past.

She falls asleep on the bus, oblivious. You stay awake, keeping watch. There are an awful lot of people on this bus today too. Maybe someone had died.

You glance at her, then at the road ahead, and at the point where it disappears into the horizon.

[czarm]

God Save the Kids

Dear clueless, whiny-ass youth of the world,

Please don’t be in such a hurry to grow up. You’re children, and you need to act like it.

You’ve a lot left to learn, and no, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you don’t know more than your parents do. You don’t know that life will be so much easier for you once you move out, or that you’ll be a much better person than they were. Life isn’t easy for them – it never was – and life won’t be easy for you.

I say this because I, at one point, was just like you. I promised myself that I wouldn’t make the same mistakes the grownups made – that the dissolution of my parents’ marriage and the yelling and screaming I was subjected to as a child wouldn’t affect me.

You can probably tell how that turned out.

See, what your parents don’t tell you – and they probably should, for good measure – is that you’re an idiot. You could be the smartest girl in your class (god knows I felt like I was so many times in the past), and you could be the one talking in front of all of your batch mates at graduation, and it wouldn’t matter, because regardless of who you are, and where you’ve been, you will suck at life.

There are people who seem to have gotten the hang of it, at the very least. They don’t cry at weddings or post post-breakup angst on social media. They don’t get needlessly angry at that old man who takes ten fucking minutes at the ATM when fifteen people are waiting in line after him. They don’t lay awake at night thinking about how different life would’ve or could’ve been, had they acted any differently in the past.

But those people are lying. Lucky streaks don’t last forever, and the truth is, that’s all they have: insane luck. At some point, further down the road, maybe tomorrow or next week, something shitty is going to happen to them – something so shitty they’ll finally accept that puta I’m not cut out for this.

That’s what life does to you. It keeps throwing shit at you until you slip on a turd and lose your cool, then it laughs at you because you look like a doofus getting upset over something so easy to clean up. Then you realize you were being petty and hose yourself off and get back to trudging, with life right behind you readying a sack of manure for its next attack.

That, dear children, is the real world. The real world is a hell full of responsibilities and bills to pay and debts you owe and hours to work. The real world is being yelled at by your bosses for mistakes they made. The real world is having enough money to buy that new console but not having any time to play on it.

In the real world, heartbreak is amplified as you become more and more aware of how the clock is ticking for you (if you’re a girl, at least. If you’re a boy, it pretty much doesn’t mean shit to you still). In the real world, you can’t just ask your folks for money, because you’re older now and they’ve accomplished their duties as parents to help you survive until college graduation. In the real world, you’re not special. You’re just another clueless kid who couldn’t wait to grow up.

The worst part is, in the real world, you can’t mask your stupidity with anything. If you mess up out here (and god knows you will), you’ve got no excuse. You’re not a kid anymore, you should know better by now. And people will stop at nothing to let you know that you’re an idiot. There’s no mincing words anymore – that shit’s for sissies. You done goofed, and you’d better own up to it.

So just stop. Stop whining about your parents not taking you seriously, or about being too young to drink. Growing up won’t change that first bit (nobody will take you seriously, I swear), and there will be plenty more reasons for you to drown yourself in alcohol after college, so just let your liver enjoy the last few years of its health. Stop looking for boyfriends or girlfriends or both – you’re twelve, Jesus Christ, you can’t even type words out completely. Stop complaining about how much high school sucks, you’re going to miss that shit when you go to college, and you’ll miss college when you start working (been there, and there is a void left in my heart where full-time education used to be).

Of course, I know you’re not going to listen to me. I’m just another one of those bitter, out-of-touch grownups who like ragging on them cool younguns cause they’re so different. I know that’s how I felt when my high school teachers told us to enjoy high school, and when our college professors did the same.

But believe me. Five or ten years from now you’ll be lying awake at night, thinking about how different life would’ve or could’ve been, had you just listened to that pottymouth on the internet. 

[czarm]

My boyfriend aka endless source of entertainment

Z: "Baba gising ka na. Kain na tayo."

M: "Jewish."

Z: "Juice?"

M: "Jewish."

Z: "Anong Jewish?"

M: "Tawag sakin pag nagtype ako ng password sayo."

Z: "Hahaha ano?? Tara na kain na tayo."

M: "Di nga ako Jewish."

Z: "Sino ba nagsabi na Jewish ka?"

M: "Si kwatro... Yung four tayo."

Z: "Haha okay good night."

[czarm]

I love you so much I decided to immortalize you in an awkward forever-looping lowres GIF reminiscent of our childhood.

[czarm]

The Tragic Tale of the Seeing Blind

This is the sad story of the old woman who thought she was all that.

Her skin was sullen and sagged in places, clinging from her sunken cheeks for dear life.

Her eyes were a dull gray sitting in pools of wrinkled skin, and her lips were forever pursed in a scowl that reflected the bitterness within.

But her eyes were clouded by some dark cloud of something else nobody could place. When she looked in the mirror, she didn’t see the same sagging, sallow skin, but the bright, clear skin of youth. She stretched her lips into shapes they weren’t used to, into something that might pass off as a smile and found it beautiful.

She thought of her worldview as universal, and thought that everyone saw her the same way: as a bright, young, vibrant woman with everything to offer.

She would yell at security guards and think that people applauded her, when in reality they laughed to themselves because of the utter lack of class they’d just witnessed. She would scoff at people doing their jobs because she couldn’t see the logic behind things that should’ve passed off as common sense.

She would go around making claims of things she’d accomplished, with nothing to show for them, and she surrounded herself with people afflicted with the same blinding illness, with the same dark cloud.

They would take photos together, appearing to themselves as a group of beautiful girls, but once the cloud had lifted, they would just be a heap of skin and bones, wrinkled, worn, and worthless.

-

TRIVIA

Crumbled: v, to break or fall apart into small fragments, esp. over a period of time as part of a process of deterioration; to cause something to break apart into small fragments

Grumbled: v, to Complain or protest about something in a bad-tempered but typically muted way; to Make a low rumbling sound

 Next time we use words, let’s make sure they mean what they think we mean.

  TRIVIA #2

Here’s a quick guide to how PAGASA names storms: http://ph.news.yahoo.com/how-pagasa-names-storms-105236399.html

 And here’s the list of storm names: http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/genmet/rpnames.html

 So, sorry, if anyone wants to name any storms, they missed their shot in 1998.

[czarm]

Z: "Naligaw na naman ako sa internet look what I found I'm crying http://www.voicelessfriends.org/"

M: "Stop reading on that topic maiiyak ka lang lalo."

Z: "But you know, the only thing that makes dogs any different from pigs and cows is that they were bred to be our companions... Tapos we eat them."

M: "When we eat them, they become parts of our bodies forever."

[czarm]

Z: "Paano ba i-translate sa Filipino yung opposite ng "money is tight"? Pota."

M: "Napoles"

[czarm]

The Stretch

Sweat trickles down his nape, the white-hot sun burning above him. Taut muscles expand and contract as he tugs on the ropes extending over the side of his boat.

The waves are gentle today – gentler than they have been over the past few days. There’s nothing to be heard but the gentle swish-swish of sea water splashing against the side of his boat.

He sits down in his boat as though it were a cradle being rocked gently by a mother’s touch, dropping his haul on the narrow floor. There’s not much in the net today – less than there has been for the past few days. There’s nothing in the mess of tangled nets but three small fish and some discarded plastic bags.

He looks out into the vast expanse of sea, to a lonely island all too familiar to him.

How tragic, how tragic it was for her to have left.

That night, in the light of a flickering candle, he remembers her and remembers how it felt to hold her, feel her rough, tanned skin against his, taste the salt on her lips, smell the sun and the sea in her hair, and watch the sunlight sparkling in her eyes. He remembers her more tonight than he had over the past few days, and he will remember her more in the days to come.

How tragic, how tragic it was for her to have left.

And how tragic it is for him to have to stay.

He listens to the sea and the constant, consistent rhythm of waves crashing upon the shore. He digs his feet into the sand, and breathes in the salty air. Years ago he would have killed for this. Now it seemed to be killing him.

Suffocating – there was too much air but it barely seemed enough.

The weight of seven years’ worth of dreams and hopes, all crashing down upon him and crushing him with every breath of salty sea air, with every whisper of the wind and every lick of a wave on the shore.

It was infectious, they’d said, like a cold or a yawn. Some called it island sickness, she called it nothing. He knew it as some horrifying mix of despair and frustration and wanderlust that his mind had no word for.

In the distance, he hears the roaring of a motorboat, just another one of the dozens upon dozens that transported tourists to and from the islands. He envied them sometimes, snug in their hotel rooms, enjoying the sun and bathing in it, the beaches totally new every time, regardless of all the other beaches they’d visited in the past. He envied them, taking vacations, venturing from their stuffy office cubicles to unknowingly pay tribute to this monster that they called the ocean.

He had been like them once too. In fact, they both had. Growing up in a rural landlocked town would do that to you – with nothing but streams and ponds to play in, you would always yearn for something more. The closest beach was six hours away, and he could never be away from home for that long. His father needed all the help he could get, with whatever job he could get his hands on at the time. Sometimes it was welding, sometimes it was car mechanics – it didn’t matter, whatever it was, his father needed his help with it.

Trips to the beach were nothing but a dream to him, until he finally mustered up the courage to sneak away with some of his friends, taking whatever money he had scrounged up over the past few months and piling into an old pickup his best friend had borrowed from an uncle.

As he stood there with the sand in his toes for the first time, breathing in the salty air, he knows there’s nothing else he’d ever want more. He would give anything to be able to stay here for the rest of his life.

When he met her, she was a youngish student stuck in school with no aspirations. She wanted to settle down, but she found herself bored to death of the idea of settling down. They would spend nights by the store just talking, ignoring the mosquitoes feasting on their exposed limbs, and he would listen to her talk about her parents and her four younger brothers (the youngest one was an angel but the other three? She wished her parents had thrown them off a bridge as babies – apparently, they had considered it anyway).

It seemed to him like they were kindred souls, both painfully aware of the world outside their rural town, but both raised to be resigned to their fate of continuing cycles and cycles of complacency.

One night he told her of that night on the beach, with the salty sea air in his hair and the sand in his toes. He tells her of the sparkling night sky and the soothing sound of the waves, of how it seemed like a whole new world, so different from the dry dusty dreary drone of their hometown.

Life washed over her face for the first time when she heard this, and he promised he would take her someday.

Now that he thought about it, it was nothing short of serendipity that led them to the small island in the middle of nowhere. Of course, it had come at a price: The death of his parents and the shoddy funeral they had put together, where one of his dad’s old clients offered him a job watching and maintaining some property he had out in the north, leaving their small rural town and leaving her to take on the job, meeting new people and finally, fortunately befriending the very man who owned the small island that had brought about their doom.

 He still remembered the look on her face when he came home and reminded her of the promises of their youth. She had settled down with that boy from the store three streets away, and it was like the sight of him brought her back to days when they sat outside that very same store talking about her brothers, now all settled down with wives of their own.

They stole away in the middle of the night, travelling for hours and hours on end, wind in their hair, eager to start anew and drown themselves in the ocean of new possibilities.

They fell into a rhythm as constant and consistent as the waves that crashed around them.

He would spend most days fishing for food, and she would stay in their cabin or out on the beach. He would come home and they would talk and she would tell him that she was happy, that she was glad they’d made the trip. They would make love and she would talk about having a family.

Some nights he’d wake up to find that she’d left their makeshift bed. He would find her outside staring out into the sea, and she would tell him that nothing was wrong.

One night, he woke up to find that she’d left their makeshift bed, but this time, she was nowhere to be found.

There was nothing but the darkness around him, swallowing him as he swallowed down his fears. Waves were crashing onto the shore around him, and he could barely make out the stars in the sky above.

How long had it been since then? Weeks? Months? Years? Days? Hours?

He would still wake up in the middle of the night sometimes and turn to his side expecting her to be there. By now he had learned to follow the rhythm of the waves until he fell asleep.

Tonight he stands in front of the sea, toes dug into the sand, breathing in the salty sea air. He gets a sick feeling of sorts in his stomach. Maybe it’s hunger, or sadness, or loneliness.

He tells himself it’s nothing.

[czarm]

Painting by Numbers

His ­favorite color is black. He doesn’t remember ever liking anything else. Sure, like all children, he probably went through that phase where red was the most heroic, and therefore the best, but for as long as he’d been able to think for himself, it had been black.

Black was the color of all his shirts, his socks, his underwear. His bags, his jackets, his shoes. Jet-black hair, deep black eyes, dark brows, deep, dark thoughts.

Color, they said, his life needed it. But he was perfectly content with black, with himself, with life as he knew it. A splash of color here and there were alright, but always, he’d go back to black, to nothing, to lightness and drifting.

At night, he’d lie in bed in the dark, close his eyes and drift off. His dreams were real, palpable. He was one who found he could weave fantasy and fact together, and still have his spirit soar with emotion. Tangible, solid, fact.

She likes everything. When she was a child, she loved orange. Not because she loved the fruit it was named after (or was the color named after the fruit? She’d have to remember to look that up)—in fact, she hated it. It was a color fewer people loved, a color that took the backseat to the reds and yellows and pinks and blues. While other children pretended to be Power Rangers, she had orange.

Later on, she moved to red, on a much darker phase of her life. Not just any red either, but a deep, dark red that others could only describe as the color of blood. No particular reason, just that it seemed apt, and it was in line with her interests at the time.

Purple, blue, the occasional pink… she wasn’t all that picky. She knew when something was pleasing to her eye and didn’t discriminate. She’d take whatever she wanted, until she herself had become a myriad of different colors all coalescing into some indistinguishable shade where the reds and yellows and pinks and blues all met.

When she dreams, her dreams are explosive. They wash over everything like waves of surrealism and fact being lost in fantasy, creeping into her core and emerging at the most inopportune times. When she dreams, she dreams of reality twisted and recolored to fit her tastes, with violet violets and those weird flowers with the blue centers and orange suns. Reality cripples her, and sometimes she stays lost for hours.

When he meets her, she’s in red and white. He’s in black. She’s odd, and she smiles out of nowhere and he instantly recognizes the juvenile air. There’s talk of things that don’t relate to them and she listens eagerly, taking in all that she can because there’s so much space in her life left to color.

They lose themselves in each other before long. Opposites attract, and the splash of color they’d said he needed seemed to offer itself up to him on a silver platter. He finds little things pleasing to his eye more and more.

A pink sweater, a blue shirt she wore on their first date, a pair of bright periwinkle pants. He sticks to black for a while, occasionally drifting to dark greens and greys, but still returning to his comfort zone every now and then. He gets a purple shirt even though he has no use for it, but gives it to her as a gift.

She settles down with the idea of all the black. She gives up some of the colors to allow herself to sit with fact and contemplate the plausible.  She loses herself in her dreams less and less, and she begins to look forward to tangible, solid, possible realities.

She enjoys seeing him, dark brows furrowed as he contemplates the current state of affairs of whatever. She enjoys putting away his black shirts and his black socks and his black shoes. She puts them next to her multi-colored clothes and admires her handiwork.

He looks at the same thing and sees little splotches of color here and there. His room is now littered with the yellow of little notes she’d left him. On his table is a painting she’d made for him, a myriad of colors serving as their background. His messages, his life, and his soul all resonate with color, with her.

He struggles for a bit, to gain composure over the change that seemed to surprise him. He’d felt it, of course, how little bits of black had slowly been carved away with colored chalk, how paint was slowly brushed over the dark recesses. He’d felt it and he’d let it happen, but he woke up in a room he hardly recognized, in a place he couldn’t remember coming to, and he shut himself off in his dark once again.

She watches him struggle, her brush and her chalk in her back pocket, bottles of paint of different colors lining the floor below her. She watches him turn out the lights and lingers.

When she packs up her things and takes away the yellows of the post-its and the rainbow in the closet, he tells her he prefers black. She tells him that she knows, that she’s always known, but the part of her that could never be pulled back into reality had been left hoping that someday, he would learn to stay in the light long enough to look around him and see how beautiful all the color is.

He tells her that he had, and he did, but it wasn’t enough. Or it was too much. He isn’t sure anymore, but he knows he can’t have it. He won’t have it. He needs what he’s always had all along. Not the reds and the yellows or the pinks, purples, blues or oranges. He needs black.

She sits with him as he closes his eyes. He dreams of reality, of fact and fiction melding together into one. He sees a splash of color every here and there, every now and again, and he can’t help but think of her, and the color she’d brought.

She falls into bed and turns out the light, lying in darkness. When she closes her eyes and dreams, she doesn’t.

[czarm]

Saudade VI.I: The Cliffhanger

There was just something about that boy with the wild mess of hair, something about how pressing into him reminded her of the smell of rain falling on parched ground.

There was something that always left her so breathless, always wanting more of and from him, always wanting it all.

"I'm not a wanting person," Ironically, she'd told others before him. "I usually content myself with what's there."

But here she was now, always wanting, always hungry, always in need of more.

His presence was like that of the sea mercilessly clawing at cliff edges, slowly wearing them down and carving into them. He would do as he would, regardless, not knowing how his every move shook her to the core.

It felt to her, like being alive.

- Written on May 1st, 2013, and uncovered months later. Still holds true, and I will never think of rain the same way again.

[czarm]

Butthurt? Nuh-uh, It's Called Filipino Pride!

Filipinos have always been an overly-emotional bunch. I know this because 1) I am a Filipino and I have been living on this god-forsaken archipelago for all 22 years of my life; 2) all the shows on primetime TV are overly-dramatic; and 3) they have proven this time and again to anyone and everyone who’s ever been on the internet.

There are many things about Filipino culture that are anchored in emotion: family-centeredness, utang na loob, hiya, even bayanihan – all of these things find their roots in empathy, in putting ourselves in other people’s shoes, in not wanting to cause other people harm or hurt or shame.

But it’s not only that. There’s also a sort of solidarity that is fostered in these values, a sort of coalescence of morals and emotions that makes one inherently Filipino.

Filipinos, we protect our own, and when it comes to Filipinos, if you mess with one, you mess with everyone. We’re one. There’s a bond that ties us together that’s deeper than blood and stronger than ancestry. There’s history and everything we learned and didn’t learn from it.

In a way, this could be seen as one of the greatest things about being Filipino. One can always ride on the coattails of other Filipinos and feel pride at another’s successes. We’re proud to be Filipinos! Manny Pacquiao is a great boxer, and even though I can’t box my way out of a blanket, I am also great because Manny Pacquiao brings glory to my country! Jessica Sanchez, Jasmine Trinidad, Bruno Mars, they’re all wonderful singers because Filipinos are naturally gifted singers! The victory of one Filipino is the victory of all! – assuming, of course, that it’s a victory warranting international acclaim. Otherwise, it doesn’t really matter.

But. But but but, it goes the other way too. Shame one Filipino, and Filipinos from all corners of the globe will come to defend them. In fact, say something negative – anything negative – about Filipinos or the Philippines in general and you will have a lynch mob at your feet in moments.

This has been true since the internet became accessible to this poor country. You can try it out for yourself. Go to any random message board or discussion thread (even a Facebook comment thread counts, most of the time) and say something negative about Filipinos. You could say something as simple as “their feet smell” or “Filipinos are barbaric because they eat balut”, or go the extra mile and write and post something like this little thing you’re reading right now in a public forum.

Filipinos are fierce, passionate, and at times, feral. If you bait them, they will come. It’s inevitable. We’re everywhere, and we will find you.

It won’t matter if you post something satirical, or if you’re trying to trigger the wonders of imagination and fiction, or even pointing out the truth in an effort to effect social change. If you say something wrong, you’d better be prepared for death threats and excommunication from the Catholic Church.

It doesn’t matter where you’re from. You can ask Dan Brown, Pol Medina Jr., and most recently, Katherine Ryan. In fact, you can ask everyone else who’s gone before them, like the Beatles, Carlos Celdran, Claire Danes, and Taylor Kitsch. Insult a Filipino or an aspect of Filipino life and you will have hate mail coming in in droves. Heck, if you’re lucky, you might even get a government official to send you a personally-signed letter stating that, oops dipshit, you’re wrong.

Yup, you’re wrong, the Philippines is a beautiful country with a rich heritage.

It’s a beautiful country with a rich heritage and millions of devout Catholics who are honest and hard-working and have enough faith in the Lord Almighty to be happy-go-lucky, my-god-will-get-me-through-these-hard-times-even-if-I-just-sit-here-and-wait-for-food-to-fall-out-of-the-sky-like-manna-for-the-Israelites people. We have so much faith that we participate in block-voting and teach our children to block out everything that doesn’t adhere to the Christian faith.

It’s rich in resources, which explains why our government officials can afford fancy cars and fifteen estates all over the country. This also explains the ever-present group of farmers outside the Department of Agrarian Reform – they’re just so happy with how resources are treated here.

We have a wonderful culture. You can come by and see for yourself. Entertain yourself with dog fights and cock fights, because in the Philippines, it’s not just legal, it’s encouraged! It’s a legitimate source of income! Enjoy the very young men and women who are more than happy to keep you company, the cheap alcohol that everyone has access to.

There are no limits to the things you can do here! Just make sure you know the right people, and have enough dough to spread around. We value everyone here! That’s why you never hear of people suddenly disappearing for having opposing beliefs, or people getting shot at point-blank because they dared to challenge the status quo.

You see, we care about each other so much that we don’t have time to care for much else! Never mind that we’ve just about lost 97%[1] of our rainforests – let the future generations deal with that! Animal cruelty? What in the world is that? We have people keeping Bengal tigers as pets here!

Filipinos are great people. We’re brave and we stand up for each other. We trust each other so much that all one needs to do is apologize and we’ll be good with forgetting anything ever happened. Never mind that there was election fraud. It’s all in the past.

We may be emotional, but we sure use this to our advantage. Look at how many Filipinos shared that Facebook photo of that kid with the tumor growing on his neck. We care, see?

Filipinos are great. We take care of our country so well. Anyone who says otherwise is wrong, and there’s nothing that can change that, not even fiscal crises, flash floods, 4-hour traffic jams, child trafficking or police brutality. So don’t you ever advocate your basic human right of freedom of expression to joke about the Philippines, or the 105.72[2] million people living in the country. We’re the 12th Most Populated Country in the World for the second year in a row now!

See, you never run out of things to be proud of when you’re a Filipino! Filipino and proud!

[1] Wikipedia contributors. "Deforestation in the Philippines." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 29 Mar 2013. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_Philippines>.

[2] "Total Population of the Philippines 2013 - Philippine Government." Affordable Cebu. 13 Apr 2013: n. page. Web. 18 Jun. 2013. <http://www.affordablecebu.com/load/philippine_government/total_population_of_the_philippines_2012/5-1-0-3004>.

[czarm]

Option Paralysis

It was one of those days. She was sitting on the bed, leaning against the wall, just breathing in and out, her hair in a loose bun, her eyes and her mind closed off to the world around her. He was out in the living room, doing god-knows-what.

She breathes in. God, was it a hot one. She could feel the fabric of her shirt sticking to her shoulders and the small of her back. She uncrosses her legs, splayed out in front of her on the bed. After a few minutes, she crosses them again.

What time was it, 2pm? 3?

He paces into the room and clears his throat. When her eyes remain closed, he clears his throat again, shifting his weight onto one leg.

She opens her eyes and looks up at him – it’s so hot, what could he possibly want?

“Well?” He asks expectantly, raising his eyebrows in a question.

“…What… what are you wearing?” She asks, finally shifting from her reclined position on the bed, straightening up to get a better look. “They said it was black-tie, but what the hell are you wearing that for?”

“I got this for cheaps at that stall that sells everything for 20 bucks.” He explains, tapping the offending item on his neck. “They didn’t have a black one but I think it’s okay.”

“It’s purple. Leopard-print.” She says.

“It’ll do.”

“It’s not even a tie.”

“It’s a bow tie.”

“IT’S A BOW TIE.” She repeats. “A bow tie.” She deliberately slows down, letting the words sink , allowing him to feel their weight. “Nobody wears those anymore.”

“Exactly. I’ll be the only one wearing a bow tie at that dinner.”

She furrows her brow and purses her lips. “A purple bow tie. You’re really going to wear that to your grandparents’ wedding anniversary? A purple leopard-print bow tie?” She asks, incredulous.

“Sure. It goes with your purple dress and that leopard-print bag you bought but never got to use.” He says matter-of-factly, fumbling with the bow tie and trying to align it.

There’s a moment of silence, and then she gets off the bed and strides toward him. “At least put it on right, then.” She says. As she reaches for the tie, he pulls it off with an audible pop! She’s stunned, surprised by the sudden movement and the thought that he had ripped his bow tie apart.

“It’s a clip-on.” He says, shrugging.

She lets out a groan, and walks back to the bed, falling onto it on her belly. “At least it’s not Velcro.” She concedes.

“That reminds me. I got you a Velcro bra.”

He starts walking back out to the living room, and she turns her head to watch him walk away. The heat is unbearable, and she closes her eyes and starts breathing deeply again.

[czarm]

Lesson # 8: Conjunctions

A year and a week later and we’ve already been through so much together. How many nights have we spent just sitting under the same roof? How many cab rides and jeep rides and bus rides have we shared? How many fevers and food comas have we survived? How many disasters and storms and bomb threats have we witnessed?

But then I always find myself looking forward to the littlest things – like sharing dinner with you, or coming home to find you sitting in your usual spot, drowning yourself in video games and that strange mix of rock-and-roll, alternative and whatever-the-fuck-that-was that you always listen to. You get off the bed and I tighten my hold on your hand and ask you where you’re going, even though we both know you’re just stepping out to make coffee, or use the toilet. It’s insane and immature and unnecessary, but then, I can always count on you to do the same.

Sometimes we fight and tear at each other with words lovers should never share, and even though neither of us has the guts to say it out loud, there are nights when we figure that it might be better if we just went our separate ways and just looked back at this as the right thing at the wrong time.

But then after the smoke clears and the dust settles and we look into each other’s dirty faces and at the bags under our eyes and the stains on our cheeks, the only thing left to do is shower together to get rid of the disgusting feeling of almost having given up on the most important thing we can think of.

There’s an email from you, a text message from me, a call from a work phone that shouldn’t even have been made.

There’s a watercolor painting, a stolen Waiting Number, a lizard skeleton and a mass of hairs we never bothered to clean up.

There’s take-out and bills and grocery bags and dust collecting dust and clothes we never did find the need to segregate.

There’s breakfasts and dinners, trips out of town and nights we’d spent falling asleep and waking up late for work.

There’s me holding your hand, and you wrapping your arm around me and telling me that it’s me and it always will be.

There’s all the fights and the crying, and the jokes-nobody-else-should-ever-hear-you-making and the laughter and the history, the plans and the what-will-be’s and where-we’ll-be’s and who-we’ll-be’s.

You don’t believe in gods but I’m sure you’d agree that we’re blessed, to have these and so much more to share. To anchor ourselves in the intangibles and still be able to think that, at the end of the day, there’s really nothing that could tear us apart.

We’re never apart for long, and even when we are, it shouldn’t really even matter. All I ever really do is count the minutes until you return. It’s insane and immature and unnecessary, but then, I can always count on you to do the same.

So you shouldn’t really be worried. The minute you step out that door, I’m just sitting by my phone or watching my email, waiting for anything from you. No matter how many mountains you climb in a storm (you idiot) or how many times you need to fly out for work (those idiots), I will always, always be waiting for you to come home.