A Day in the Life...

A Letter to Elise by The Cure Not only in these moments that I have pondered the possibility of writing a long overdue requiem for an old friend that had already gone to the netherworld, but also in many other instances before. Maybe I just hadn’t had the time before or maybe the time wasn’t just right. And so now I shall speak of him in the best of manners and as far as my remembrances of him could take. Aziz Vernon Mustapha was closer to me as a brother than as a friend. I met him during our first years in Ateneo de Zamboanga, in a time and place that was etched in my mind like mildew on a rock. He was sweating so furiously one sunny afternoon when he appeared out of nowhere and suddenly sat beside me without any prelude in a Religion 101 class that we had both attended. He kept on scrubbing the area around the back of his neck with a handy towel and that made me a little uneasy. It was the first week of school that year and I panned around the entire length of the room for an...

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Last Saturday, I found myself wondering why I feel a little strange, becoming aware so suddenly of the virtual isolation I have these days. It dawned upon me that I was really living a kind of a hermitic life, although not any of my intention to be so. I was not always like this. As recent as two years ago, I was always out that I felt then that I had no time at home even when I was already married and having kids toddling around. I was always with my fraternity brods for some meetings on weekends or if not, I was out practicing with my band, then called “The Dirty Sox” . Yeah, I had a band then with my friend Aziz , who have passed away already due to a highly debilitating sickness. This story may need elaboration in future entries and Aziz is an old friend that needs an elegy. Now I felt like I have not seen the sun for the longest time. Not really though, since I have to fetch the kids every day from school. I just felt like I haven’t had time for myself lately. This April, I’d be ...

“Once I had a secret love, that lives within the heart of me. All too soon my secret love, became impatient to be free. So I shout it from the highest hills. Even told the golden daffodils. At last my heart is an open door, my secret love is no secret anymore?” ---Secret Love, as Sung By George Michael This is supposed to be a Valentine’s Day posting, something to think about, to sipped coffee over, and mull over the inanities about it all. But it came a day late while I weigh in if I should talk about it or not. For this might be a brimming scandal, where such is scandalous even to those who sell their souls to the devil. What was in my mind was something about a secret love that never wanes and never fades as it goes on haunting my heart and soul like a runaway train that heads for nowhere and goes on traveling like a ghost ship in some dark and foggy side of the ocean. She was like a jewel among the forest of stones and rocks, a lily within the pond. Every now and then I think abo...

I met Evelyn, the wife, during my first year in Ateneo. Our family moved house towards a neighborhood that had once been familiar to me in the past. The old apartment where Uncle Mameng’s once rented was just nearby. Lustre Street felt familiar, there were those stark reminders of those adventures I had in my childhood. There were the chronic water ponds were fishes used to roam and we go fishing like there was no tomorrow. The rice fields somewhere in the out backs of the houses on stilts seemed barren now, but in the past, wild birds dotted the swampy area that I had slingered quite a number of them. I never had a girlfriend up to the time I met Evelyn and it took me quite a number of nights thinking about my move. I was not used to these sort of things.The neighborhood friends were too urgent that I had to save some manly honors. There were not a few times that I sipped a bottle of beer before I would speak to her. And some nights it was not merely sipping when I was already half-c...

The Sauteed Upo Yesterday, my stomach cringed a bit trying to put morsels of fried herring into my mouth. The day before, I just gobbled pieces of chicken meat and swallowed it just in order to put some heaviness in my tummies. I felt I was just flooded by too much fish and meat in the past days that I could possibly go haywire in the head when I see another dish of fish and chicken. So I said what’s enough should be enough. Last night, I swore before the evening stars that I shall eat vegetables by tomorrow come high or deep water.  I went scouring for vegetable recipes in the internet and since I knew a few blogsites offering these kinds of postings, I went to them immediately. It was in Ting Aling’s site that I found the apple of my palate, of all blogsites in the world. Right before my eyes was the how-to-cook presentation of Guinisang Upo and my heart was palpitating a bit and was strained, worrying that I may become the dreaded plagiarists that the local blogosphere w...

What do you know; I’ve got another vivid dream last night. No angels though yet I feel it’s worth elucidating if only for reason that it is such a lucid chunk of visions in my head while I slept so deeply and it may evoke some meanings for me or for the lives we all live. The dream started on a steep hill in a place I have never been to in my entire life but it felt like I was in Antipolo, because the rolling hills reminded me of the place called Cherry Hill, the site of a famous landslide disaster some years back and which I was able to have a glimpse of in television and newspapers. I asked in my mind what was going on since there were a lot of people outdoors watching some neighborhood event, out in the open field while the sun was shining so brightly and the wind was warm as the summer breeze. Some bystanders answered me: “A boy from Japan was showing some flying ship.” I stretched my neck out and see for myself what the whole fuzz was all about. As I heard the whirling s...

OGDEN KRONENGEKEL --- such is the name of the main protagonists inside my dream, other than myself of course. Have you had yourself a vivid dream? In my childhood days, I had numerous dreams of these sorts, the kind that are so crystalline in clarity that some of them I could still recall until now. I usually dream about angels in the past, flying with them into tree-lined outfields, and falling off from cliffs if I lose some footings while in the act of flying. Every time I fall from the air in those dreams, as I lose control of my body movements, I also fall from my beds that the falling sensation felt so real and everyone in the house could hear me scream . My dream about Ms. Kronengekel (yes, she was a woman sporting jet-black hair falling down towards her knees) about three nights ago wasn’t purely about angels although some parts of it were about them cherubim. Unlike my other dreams, this one involves a narrator who whispers to me some facts that I need to know as the sto...