A Day in the Life...

Fleeting Clouds San Beda might have been somewhere in my past memory if only memories were so affirmatively credible every time. The minute I went there, I thought I had known just how those gothic buildings would have looked like; as if I had previously walked those high-ceilinged halls before, where my shoes would click and clack like horses' hooves. I felt a little de ja vu as I roamed those halls with their handsomely checkered floors. I must have loved temples and mansions in my past life. So much of the past was in my mind. I burned candles for nearly four months in order to refresh my grasp of those mountains and mountains of law books, as if I had any grasp at all. I rented a room less than a kilometer away from San Beda and for most of my stay in Manila; I must have walked the length between the law school and the boarding house a million times over. I felt comfortable the minute I stepped into my boarding school. My room was overlooking the busy street o...

“There was the brightest star that guided me through the night in those nights of enchantment. While the angels flew here and there in order to execute their graceful pantomimes, in order to relay the Divine Messages, the bright start stood there like a beacon that somehow I knew I would never lose my way.” There was once a common man that got betrothed and married his long-time fiancé in a simple bridal ceremony. There was the wedding ring that he bought and he gave it to his bride. They lived contentedly although the at times life was hard on them. There was even a time that he had so much difficulties making ends meet that he had to pawn his wedding ring. His wife lamented this fact but he merely explained that what was more important is that they have food on their dining table. His kinsmen knew about this and even berated him for it and he merely said, “It is merely a ring.” He went about with his work in his humble farm and with his other duties that it came that even if ...

Strange Occurence On One Strange Night Years after, the house of Hadja Saniya was graying and the paint on the walls subsided that there was an apparent darkness everywhere. When night comes, the darkness is more pronounced as silence complements the general dimness. The smell of old wood always lay heavy upon my nose that every smell of wood reminds me of the house. Dirt stuck to the decades old walls invites me always to stare at them and I reckoned then that the dark stains on them formed the shapes of men and other unlikely beings. The house was alive I thought then and it breathes into our lives every moment we happened to be there. In the night, these shadows become sharper that I thought I saw the shade of an old woman always while the lights are out and I lay there trying to find sleep, turning in my bed while cuddled inside heavy fabric, sweating profusely from fear of shadows. I would sweat so heavily from warmth as I resisted the terrifying shadows of an old woman si...

“An angel held a huge sword in his hands and was about to vanquish a demon that was fallen upon the ground. The angel then signaled to me that in order to eliminate the demons completely, the sword had to be trusted right into its very own heart. We must vanquish our own demons into their very own hearts.” In the scorched ground of the desert , one must walk not only having in mind the harshness of the blistering sun or the ever threatening sand storms that always brings havoc in the cold night. To journey upon the desert, one needs an extraordinary care for something that is often unseen yet the most fatal. It is not the danger of the scorpions or the treacherous snakes that I am speaking of but the lethal trap of a quicksand. The man walking through the desert must watch out carefully for any hint of soft sand along the way. There is just no other way to foresee danger brought about by the quicksand except by the keenest of foresight. When one is caught in it, the faste...