Panamgo

Ang panamgo sang isa nga naga higugma

Palangga, kung tani imu mabatian ang handum sang akon kasing-kasing

Imu ayhan tatapon ang mga hutik sang akon tagipusuon?

Apang wala ka diri, kag wala kasiguraduhan ang nabatyagan mo para sa akon.

Ngaa bala may duta kag dagat pa nga napatunga sa aton nga duwa?

Kung diri ka tani kag kung dira man tani ako

Indi ko na lang pag dal-on sa damgo ang kahidlaw sa imu.

Kaangay sang handumanon nga ulan sa mainit nga adlaw

Kaangay sang handumanon nga tubig sa tunga sang disyerto

Amu ini ang akon pangabay, ang akon hingyo

Nga tani lupadon sang hangin o daligdigon sang tubig

Ang mga tinaga nga

Palangga... ginahigugma ta ka.

Love's imaginings

It's blistering hot and yet pieces of love and letters are floating in my head, seemingly oblivious to the humidity of a warm summer night. They fill my thoughts and in my mind's eye, I see them clear as day, ready to be plucked from the air and immortalized, cached and compartmentalized. Sometimes, thoughts of love and romance move you and you can't help but be swayed. Sway along with me.

~~~

"Hey, I think you forgot my goodbye kiss."

I was almost at the top step of the apartment complex where we live when you called out. I turned around and saw you looking impishly at me. Your eyes told me I had done something quite inconsiderate in your book. I hopped down the stairs and threw my arms around you. As  I leaned in for a kiss I whispered, "Did you forget? Right there by the archway when I helped you put on your coat," then I kissed you lightly, lingering on your lower lip, nibbling it just a little.

You smiled. "Gotcha! Why are you such an easy target, my love?" 

I groaned, "You do this all the time! There will come a day when I will no longer believe everything you say, love. Just wait and see."

"You believe everything I say, hun," you smirked and gave me that half-smile I most adore. The one you know I can never say 'no' to. Just last night, that smile had me whimpering underneath rumpled sexy satin sheets. 

"No. Nuh uh. Not this time. There will be no more gullible me." I swore vehemently. I reached over and fixed your collar, looked at you straight in the eye and said, "Starting today, I will no longer believe everything you say."

"Oh, yeah?" Your eyes were endless pools of mischief just for the briefest of moments. In less than a fraction of an electric second, they magically turned serious as they bore down on mine. I took a deep breath, steeled myself for what was to come. 


"I love you to the moon and back. I love you today and everyday for the rest of our lives."

I sniffed, "So you say. Go on, you'll be late."

"Alright, call me later?"

I smiled, "Maybe."

As soon as you disappeared around the bend, I rushed to the apartment and grabbed my phone. You picked up at the second ring. "I love you, too, you big doofus."

Because yes, you know me so well. Yes, because I do love you to the moon and back a billion times. In fact, I love you in every way anyone has ever loved.

~~~

Yet sometimes, love chooses to leave, despite and in spite of how hard we fight for it or how long we wait. 

~~~

“I’m leaving,” I say. She looks at me with blank eyes I’ve come to loathe. She thinks I’m pulling her leg. A smile begins to form in the corners of her mouth and she dissolves in laughter. I wait for the tremors to subside. 


“Are you done?” I ask quietly. She looks up and frowns. I know she sees the seriousness in my eyes. Her frown deepens. She sees something else.

“Yes, I’m tired.” I reply to a query she has yet to voice out. She drops her face into her hands and lets out a groan. “What have I done?” She mumbles. I refuse to answer not because I want to be intentionally cruel but because the words won’t come. For the life of me, I am at a loss for words. 


“Please, don’t come looking.” I tell her, my hands lightly touching her arm. “I don’t want to be found.”

“At the very least, tell me why.” She grabs my hand and imprisons them in her own. The warmth is distracting, conjuring images in my mind. I shake my head in an effort to forget and I hastily pull back my hand. “Moot point,” I reason out. “You wouldn’t understand.”


“Try me,” she answers sardonically.

“I want to.” I turn away as traitorous eyes threatened to dim with unshed tears. I focus on a bunch of roses blooming in the English garden we both painstakingly tried to maintain. 

“We vowed to make this work,” she says. “I chose you, remember?”

“I know,” I murmur. “I’ve never thanked you enough for choosing me.”

“If that’s what’s bothering you, forget it. I don’t regret choosing you.” I can feel her pacing around in the room. I feel the desperation in her every step. She lays a questioning hand on my shoulder, wordlessly asking permission to take me into her arms and crush this folly away.

Love's folly indeed.

Thing, Interrupted

Will I forget?

When I close my eyes I conjure an image of you, striding, looking around, grabbing your phone, furiously punching…. Hello? Hey! I can see you… you stepping through the door, me rushing to meet you, hands shaken, awkwardness forgotten. When I open my eyes you linger like a phantom, your voice, your laughter, your touch… Oh my, how you touched me… I can feel them in the air all around me, in the cadence of my breath, in the rise and fall of my chest, heaving, believing, hoping the ocean non-existent, personal idiosyncrasies notwithstanding.

If I close my eyes will you be there? More real, more concrete, more than my imaginings, more than words, than conversations, images, poems, notes, musings, romantic somethings. If I open my eyes will you disappear? Your memory, your feel, your sound, your laughter, your voice, your eyes, your hair, your touch buried in my everyday nothings, my reality, my noise, my attempt at nonchalance, masking, distracting, forgetting. But will I?

Will I forget?

Let's talk about...

LOVE.


What is love, really? 


The crazy, I will cross the ocean, quit smoking, be a better woman, you complete me kind of love? Love is, I guess. It defies explanation, kicks logic in its goddamn face, mangles the brain, messes up the mind, and churns fools out of otherwise imperfectly perfect rational human beings. At the same time, Love is pure, is carnal, is hope, is dream, is random, is divine, is beautiful, is perfect, is heaven, is sunshine, is rain. It just is.


The beginnings of Love is a sight to behold. It ignores gender, crosses borders, transcends time, breaches boundaries, travels space, unites cultures, inspires art, prose, poetry, and music. Love is the meeting of the minds, the touching of two wandering, wondering souls. It is a gift. A song of happy impermanence, a life lived in snippets and wonderful moments, its echoes beating through the walls of your heart and mind. 


It is blessed when it anchors itself. Love is. Wrapping itself gently around you until it grows and grows and grows and grows and sheds light into the dusk of your life.


Sometimes, Love chooses to disappear and the days turn into endless nights. When Love disappears, choose to fight or heed its cry. But know, that it is not Love but the person in which you have enveloped with Love that has made the choice. 


Love is omnipresent. It never leaves. It may wane, disappear, evolve, morph, transform, choose to be different. But it never leaves. 


You are Love. It moves with you, reflected in your thoughts, your choices, your joys, your travails, your triumphs, your sorrows. 


Love is lesbian. Love is queer. Love is straight. Love is gay. Love is for you and for me, regardless of who we choose to love. Love is free.


Love is. That's all we know.

Internet zen, what?

When I was in my early 20s (yesss... how old are you again, you devil?) I was all over the World Wide Web. I had a Friendster account; then a Facebook page; some students and a few friends cajoled me into starting a Multiply account; and yes, I had a couple of blogs. I think I used to have a Wordpress blog and another at its sister site, Blog (how original, no?). Oh, and let's not forget I used to have a Twitter account as well. Amidst all the hullabaloo, and that one fateful night of several unanswered texts and a couple rejected calls, I got the bright idea to practice Internet zen, which meant limiting my online carbon footprint to just my now defunct blog, The Renaissance Chick.

That was, give or take, three years ago when being online meant a huge pain in the backside. The hassle of having multiple online repositories was getting on my nerves and I soon came to start forgetting usernames and passwords. Plus, allow me to be a little vain here, I wanted to get rid of incriminating, unflattering and fugly photos of me. And so, I deleted my Facebook and Friendster accounts, and my Wordpress blog, which I couldn't open anymore having forgotten my username and password. I was now left with a Twitter account that already was on the road to extinction, and my blog, The Renaissance Chick. I stopped tweeting soon enough, deleted my account and concentrated on just my blog. But I had to delete that for reasons that I most eloquently state here.

The Multiply account was relegated to the back burner but has recently made a silent comeback. After three years, I remembered my username and password! What a miracle, eh?

Fast forward to the present. I've signed up on Twitter (again!) at the start of the year and have begun to tweet like a mad woman. I am loving this blog (Oh, yes, yes, yes... I am loving Twitter, too. Hell, yeah!) and because I needed a space to post my photos and my random and sometimes of little import notes on life, love and everything in between which would otherwise be too short and a total waste of space to post on this blog --- I've signed up on Tumblr.

Stomach, meet somersaults.

Whoopdedoo! I've posted some photos of my recent trip to lalaland because my mother has been bugging me to show her the photos for weeks. I will be posting some quotes that strike me funny or simply have struck a chord in me or tugged at my heartstrings. And of course, my notes and observations on my wonderful life, conundrum, what have you. I've posted the link somewhere in this blog for you curious cats.

So there. What happened to all my Internet zen bullshit? Wait, is that a rhetorical question?

What's in a name?

Her kiss. Her touch. Her name. This thing we have. The thing that inexplicably, unexpectedly existed before it needed a name. Name, name, name, name it into a pedestal. Explain it and say it. Name it all, everything. Damn you, name that feeling, that sense, that energy; name you and me and us and what you want, and how you want and what this is and what it will be and what you will be and what we can be and what we will be. Tell me what this is now that it wasn't before. Name the thing that makes it real. Tell me the true story of the origins of life on Earth and name the route that got us from there to here, then to now; us.


From nothing comes something. Names come after. After the longing of unknown cause, the wish never whispered, the thought never shared, the feeling that explodes, the experience that sparkles and blinds, the inventions, the creations, the ache that flares, the thing, that thing, the something that was not here before and now is here, big as the world and wide as the sky; the feeling of her as she steps close. The exquisite feeling of her arms around you. Her lips. Her strength. Her beauty. Her smile that beguiles. Her mind that intrigues. Her voice that enchants. Her words that captivate.


Naming captures. Holds. Forever. Even if what is named changes, evolves, morphs into something else, fades, wanes, disappears, goes extinct or magically reappears. A woman loves a woman. Naming a thing calls it into existence, calls it to attention, heralds its arrival and achievements and failures and its place, its right to exist -- and to be -- in our very human world.

Just a thought

Perhaps we are often[always] bound to cultivate the obscure, to hide behind a shroud of vagueness where the ones we [romantically]love are concerned.

Look what I found!

Finding out that my Multiply site hadn't gone down in flames revealed some pretty wonderful things, such as the photo below. This photo was a gift from the inimitable Ms. Rita Bustamante a couple of Christmases ago. I've lost the original photo but this, this is way better, knowing how time and effort went into the making of it. Thanks, Ms. Bu! You made me look so purrtttyyy. :)

Interesting how my site, Flotsam & Jetsam, chronicled a lot in my life then: my bout with mild depression, my coming to terms with myself about my sexuality; and way before I tackled the former two, my giddy, girlish and petty random thoughts. So methinks I'm going to keep the site, albeit no update is necessary.

I hadn't realized then that these entries spoke volumes about who I was in 2008 and 2009, how confused I was and how I tentatively tried to get a grip:

On falling in love and discovering it was with a woman:

"there's this book i got for my birthday, which i haven't gotten around to reading yet...i will, as soon as i finish my requirements for school and work and life and...i probably won't get to read it until i'm ensconced in my seat on a plane ride back to Iloilo but that's another story.

moving on...the title obviously hit me. the truth about forever... fill in the blanks, finish the darn thought... i've been thinking...wishing, hoping is more like it...the truth about forever is that it must exist in this special place exclusively shared by two people. of course, this is stuff for the movies. forever is a fallacy...

lucky me... sometimes i lie in my bed just thinking and wondering WTF have i gotten myself into. lucky me... i can't tell the world for reasons that rank .789 in Cronbach's Alpha.

i once wrote a poem with the lines:

how i came to be me is a mystery even to myself... these lines have never held more truth and weight until now. being who i am now? is this really part and parcel of who i am or am i just caught up in the whirlwind of this exquisite feeling called _________.

i'm hesitant to label the going-ons in my life right now because it gives me a sense of finality. don't get me wrong..i'm not scared of finding out the truth about me. i can deal..it's the process of going through that discovery and the emotions that come with the territory  are what's giving me the jeebies.

how i feel is scaring me...it's everything and nothing."

On my bout with mild depression or extreme sadness:

"Inasmuch as I would like to act mature over what is unfolding in my life right now, I'm afraid the circumstances prevent me from doing so. Right now, I feel like crying. Crying over something I cannot put a finger on. My emotions have totally spiraled out of control that they have taken precedence over everything that constitute my life: work, relationships with friends and family, my over-all wellbeing. Everything is an irony. I want to be left alone yet I yearn to talk to someone who'll lend an ear. I am so confused. I don't know what to do. I've always been a bit sarcastic and cynical but lately, my sarcasm is out in full force. I snap at students. My moods are ever-changing like crazy. I feel that every smile and friendly banter I share with people is fake. I'm a fake, forcing myself to smile when all I want to do is cry, forcing myself to function properly when all I want to do is curl up in a ball and huddle in one corner. I feel like turning my back to the world. I just want my mom.

I don't know what's happening to me. I feel like I'm in a nightmare where the chances of my waking up are slim. I look horrible. I am haggard even if I've had a full night's sleep. My work is not giving me the exhausted satisfaction I get after I've done everything and more. I used to go to mass everyday. I've stopped going on the excuse that I'm not feeling well. I've flirted shamelessly with someone who's in a relationship. I'm turning into the woman I abhor the most. I have lost control over my life."

I remember 2008 and 2009 very well. 

The former was just a sad, sad year for me. I remember waking up in the morning and crying; I remember falling asleep at night, exhausted from the tears. I couldn't understand why I was just so sad. It was then I started running. I'd run every given day for an hour or two at most. After each run, I'd slump down and sleep off the exhaustion. The tiredness prevented me from thinking and wallowing in my misery and confusion as to why I was so miserable. I lost so much weight which had everybody concerned for my health. The nuns would send food up to the dorm for me. I had colleagues suggest therapy and joining groups of young adults and what have you. I ignored them all and hid in my room. I didn't speak to anyone. I was like an automaton, going through the motions of everyday with nothing. Towards the last quarter of the year, I was able to break through the misery with the help of a friend, who, to my surprise, turned out to be something more.

The latter was a year of discovery and changes, although it, too, was tinged with confusion. I discovered something I think I've known for a long time but haven't explored: my attraction and love for women. I discovered love for a particular woman. I discovered love and realized it's not what it's cut out to be in the movies and in the books I've read. That it's different for everyone, and it certainly was for me. I realized that I am too much in love with love that it hampers the reality of my love at the time. I learned to deal and fight and apologize. I was humbled and learned to let go. I left pride at the door and loved, loved too much. But it was good.

Looking back, I'm seeing how I've grown, how I'm much more kinder to myself and to other people, and how, I'm hopefully a much better person. I've learned how to make it work. It being life and everything in between. Love, on the other hand, is something of a work in progress. But isn't that to be expected? In love, all we can do is try. That, and take a chance.