Enough is Enough

 (Las Virgenes Cristianas Expuestas al Populacho by F.R. Hidalgo, 1884)

Enough is enough is enough.
Stop mopping.
I can make you happy.
I know you best.
I can take you to all the movies you want,
all the galleries in the world,
all the places you've always wanted to go to,
to the heights of joy you can't find elsewhere.
Let's bring a tripod or a selfie stick,
whichever, I don't care,
to document that you and I exist,
our relationship exists,
that we are happy the way we are,
so when we look back decades after,
you'll come to realize that I have been
right all along.
I'm the strong one, yes, I am,
but you're not weak - you're
deluded -
thinking that you need someone else.
You have me, I have you.
A ring? I can give you that.
A house? Why not?
With a backyard for our dog to run around,
We'll grow old together,
us kids.
We'll spin our own stories,
pages and pages of them.
I will make it happen for you.
I am here to be with you,
for better or for worse,
in sickness and in health,
I will hold you in my arms.
Like Ray said,
your fears and bad dreams,
I may not be able to make them go,
but I can hold you forever.
Your heart is in pieces right now.
You're saying good bye.
I see that. I see you.
I'm not telling you to forget.
I'm asking you to make an effort
to accept me,
us,
and when you can't take it anymore,
I'll just sit with you, like this,
right now,
repeating a mantra,
enough is enough is enough.

(The picture above has nothing to do with the poem, by the way. I saw it today at the National Gallery of Singapore and absolutely loved it. Makes me want to do a pilgrimage to the Lopez Museum in Manila).

Small Glories

We got the best seat in the house.
What a view. The vast empty
above propped by glitter,
laser lights masked the dark,
straight beams mirrored on the
water deep below, shadowed
a roped corner, a ring in which we fenced.


On my heels for fourteen hours,
mascara, doubly-applied, held
my eyelashes rigid and I smiled
Red Tomato.

We had an adult conversation going,
a familiar accent of long time ago.
People with jobs, business cards,
shook hands, touched elbows,
clinked beer bottles, did a little shuffle
dance, a merry-go-round of this thing called
mingling. Is this rehearsal for real life,
or is this it? 

The red I wore barked, wanton
for attention, and there were few
who wanted to strip it off me.

I forgive, but my elephant memory knows you.

Fifteen hours on, my legs were jelly
and I climbed the steps, back
to a cold room.

On Dating #2

God.
God. 
I just had a narrow escape.
It's this, isn't it?
What you've been trying to tell me?
I'm sorry for being deaf to your voice.
I couldn't read the currents
you want me to follow.
It may help if I have a map,
but I know it won't be fair.
You let me dive headfirst,
and I'll let you pull me out.
It's the deal.

While we're at it, may I just ask,
how many literate, monogamous,
family-minded, self-reliant,
tax-paying, porno-averting,
heterosexual, unmarried males have you made
in the last thirty to thirty-five years?
I just need one, please.
That's a short description, by the way.
I have the complete list
and right now I'm at #146:
"He shall have no previous ballet training."
I will be very jealous if he had.
The list is real.
But we don't need to get all ticked.
A two-third will be nice.

Oh, well.
A girl has to ask.
Or learn how to.

On Dating #1

I'm not a fucking charity case.
Nor am I a doormat for your grimes.
The pieces are finally coming together,
and I don't like what it's telling me.
I hate the notion of human interference
in the business of strictly you and I.
The fact that you approached me with
this seed of thought, abhorrent, and
I welcome you with naivete,
repulses me more than I can say.
You have your issues.
(I shall make no judgment,
just know that you're a creep)
I have mine. Glad that you saw
only a fraction of me.
Now I know why you wouldn't let me
see, dig, claw.
You breached that trust first.
Big fucking Bang, I'd say.
Scrub, rinse, scrub. Repeat.

---

Of course I'd like to add "Go fuck yourself" somewhere but it won't gel to the piece.

Late Night Snack

I'm devastatingly hungry.
Those less of men will think me
frivolous for using such an adverb
lightly in the light of today's reality
but I do intend it with all my might,
that I'm hungry to the point of
being devastated by it.
There is a hole of unfathomable depth,
a hollow point that no tsunamis can
satiate, and I fill it with late night trips
to the hawker centers with 24/7 dim sum stall.

As I struggle with the tight knots of the steaming
hot plastic, a thought resonates,
of somebody who said something to a poet,
how they tried to create importance out of
nothing at all,
and here I am, in my kitchen, in the dark,
with two chicken feet and a pair of chopsticks,
and I ramble on - how self-centered, how
egoistic, how self-conscious are you to
think that this can be a poetry.

But I'm still devastated and hungry,
and those two don't mix well, ever since
I got the first whiff of that city far away,
from a woman's arm (or perhaps it was her hair),
and it reminded me of you.
Everything reminds me of you.
How funny, how silly,
I shall forget about this in the morning.
But just for the moment,
just now, I will eat and I will forget
you.

Strange Love Letter#2

I want to murder hope.
There, it's now in the open.

Hope, vengeful and triumphant

a silk thread

I cut til I bleed and still,

it claws deep, alive

because of a dream,

a voice in my head,

the prophet, 

who says, This is right.

Were I brave enough,

were it falter once,

I will take poison

the bitterest, my love

to kill every speck of you

to scrub me raw and repeat.

Were there is a pill,

anti-hope, anti-you, dear

I will take without water.

Choking optional.

How I plot!
Going against the divine

is a sordid, blue affair.

I tip-toe between wrath

and spiritual abyss.

Yes, I promised, I swore true

to nurture, nourish, foster.

Yet, if love turns cold,

may I not seek to escape,

before hate takes reign?

Leashed with hope, 

I follow one path forward.

This road is getting darker,

and only you have the light.

Why do you keep it from me?

Strange Love Letter

Here's a song I dreamed last night:

"I don't want to be Adam.

I don't want to be Eve.
They had no choice.
But baby, you and I,
We can choose to leave."

Since most of my dreams are silent movies (with subtitles), how do I know it's a song? Because it's so sappy and I've had probably listened to too much Country lately.

Then today I stumbled upon “Our Love is Easy” by Melody Gardot. In this song, there is a line: “Like Adam was to Eve, you were made for me.”

 I don't dispute that – but as Billy Joel once said:

 “So I would choose to be with you
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break.”

 And so it goes. 

Shards

There's something to be said about heartbroken girls who cry in public. We still care about how we look to others despite shards in the vicinity of the heart. Not because we're vain; but because we don't want to disturb others. We hate it when people look at us with pity or, worse yet, awkwardness. We reflexively want to apologize and at the same time raise a figurative middle finger - both of them preferably, if we weren't so busy holding and sobbing onto a tissue.

Speaking of tissues, they get soggy really fast although we don't cry that much. I wonder if there's some weird chemistry that accelerates its disintegration when tears make contact.

And about people looking at you - they usually fall into two categories: those who gape and those who avert their eyes. The former is merely a slower version of the latter. Eventually everyone stops looking at you. But their gaze lingers.

Right before we burst, we would probably say, "I'm not going to cry" or a version of it. That translates to "I'm trying hard not to look weak right now but I know I'm lying."

Big, fat lie.

Some of us break in a spectacular outburst; some sob and catch their breath; others manage (or not) to cover their face and let out in silence. No matter how, the hurt is real for each and everyone.

The hardest part of this whole thing is holding out the tears before and the smile after. Because heartbroken girls who cry in public are expected to cheer up sooner or later. Grief, pain, fatigue, anger, disappointment and despair are matters of the closed doors.

We abide. Oh, how we abide. Because we hate to intrude.

But sometimes we fail.

It's not about drama. Never about making a scene. We are level-headed people who dislike calling attention to ourselves. When the valve turns on, it is never a choice. It's almost physical but I hesitate to call it such - a burp is physical, a fart as well - but tears? Tears imbued with so much feelings?

Perhaps it is self-preservation.


Singapore, 13 August 2015

Bad Puppy

Once I knew about a man who flirts.
No harm, all fun and plenty of charm.
Opens doors, pays for dates, not once late.
How nice, you'd thought, to have him around.

He listens, he smiles, he drinks cognac.
He laughs, he jokes, and he texts you back.
Cash, cars, cards, condos, clubs, what a guy.
Oh my god, you'd thought, let's have a try.

But, there's always a big freaking but,

He, the smug vainpot preening for blood
the douchebag with a joint in his hand,
plays the VIP Casanova,
in a liar game every Friday night

I want a family, he whispers,
Two kids, one boy, one girl, and a dog
A repeat litany every week,
An ever changing congregation.

But, there's always a big freaking but,

Happily ever after, you see
doesn't include a picture of silence,
he so artfully paints come morning,
slipping out before the alarm rings.


Well now, you'd thought, the fucking bastard.


---

Decided that I didn't like the way it rhymed, especially when I shifted the meter and made it all messy. So, here's another try, with Nicki Minaj in my head, loud and so-oh-very-her, telling me to shut the fuck up and write. No Billy, no Thorin and no Thranduil this time. Just me and Nicki, and steady nine.

Boy, that changed the voice of this piece so much. I had aimed for a lighter tone, but it wasn't working. So anger it is. But it's not rap - it doesn't fly. I may want this for a song lyrics one day.

One thing remains, however; puppies don't go to hell, bad or not. All dogs go to heaven.

I still love puppies.

Life Is...

-having a bad day in the office

-getting on the train after three tries

-internet failing you when you need it the most

-you shuddering when taking a look at price tags

-the stench inside the mall making you wonder if it's coming from you

-the super short skirt you see someone wearing, followed by a question

-the third voice inside your head who's a professional critique

-the queue at the supermarket

-giving up on grocery because of said queue at the supermarket

-being crushed at the thought of another microwave dinner

-buying food from a stall you don't really like

-getting shortchanged on the amount of squid

-getting onions for squid instead

-being angry at the old uncle who wasn't paying attention on the street

-being angry at yourself for being angry at the uncle

-saying 'thank you' and 'please' even when you don't feel like it

-thinking of how lucky the world is you're not a superhero

-thankfully not imitating fiction since you're most likely a supervillain-in-the-making if it is

-shouting 'Hulk Smash!' over and over again inside your head, trying to get the feel

-the taste of oil lingering inside your mouth

-the thought of cold beer and fried chicken

-the anticipation of a good drama show

-the realization that all of that need to wait until work is done

-knowing that being patient is key

-knowing that you're not blessed with patience

-the urge to write these all down before you turn into a green monster

-hating your phone for buzzing incessantly

-saying grace

-eating your kangkung, peppers and onions while leaving the squids for last

-being grateful the rice is hot

Quizás, Quizás, Quizás

This is Milos Karadaglic, playing my favorite Doris Day's "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps." Do me a favor - if you're planning to read the text below, click "play" on the video first. 

* * *

From my office you can see a boat in the sky and every time it catches my sight, I think of Noah. Of his dream and legend, and why the idea of placing an object so out of its depth in midst of vacant air is so enthralling. It is the unexpected that captures our attention, the abnormal. We see beauty in the strange, the alien. We hail the people who create these strange, wondrous things. But not always.

When Noah was tasked to build the Ark, I imagine he wasn't very popular. People would've called him insane. Got few loose screws in his head, probably could benefit from some knocks. Oh Noah, he's a loony man.

Had he ever felt despair when the ridicules got too much? When the barbs stung a little too close to heart, had he ever wanted to join others in the mocking? Had he ever hated himself?

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

According to the story, however, the Ark got built anyway.

I wonder if Noah had ever seen this coming—his story surviving the thick coils of time—and what he might've said if he could see us now, trying to do what he'd done so many ages ago.

Nowadays the sky looks ready to release another biblical flood and even though I do not put much stock in the doomsday predictions (plural, of course, because we, as a species, have a universal fascination with death whether we want to admit it or not), I keep waiting for the crack in the clouds that will bring rain of lightning and hails. It crosses my mind now and then that the world may really end on a Friday, which is just two days away, but then the thought simply excuses itself and slinks back to the corner.

Some people say that humans are born alone and will die alone, so even when all perish two days from now, each life still leaves this world as alone as they were when they entered it. But alone doesn't mean lonely. Alone doesn't mean hopeless. Even at the end of everything, there can still be hope and companionship.

Allow me to recall the thought that has been festering at the corner. I'd like to call this nearest doomsday prediction the Unexpected Expected. It's expected because people were told beforehand that it's coming (although no one's vouching for the source's credibility), but at the same time it's also unexpected because people think it's an almost certainty that it won't happen since experts all around the world have managed to drag the hype down to the level of superstitious murmurs. 

If the Unexpected Expected does occur this Friday, we are faced with a huge abnormality and like most I suspect, we won't be ready for it. We had our chances to become Noah, but we didn't take it.

Reading this, you may think to yourself, "Pfft, it ain't gonna happen. The world's not going to end on Friday."

Well.

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.

Formulaic Dharma

When I thought I knew how things were going to end, I always ended up with defied expectations and a bittersour aftertaste. Bittersour because it's the kind of taste you wish you can forget forever and not to be fondly reminisced once in a while like bittersweet. I believe this is why I rarely set any expectations at all, the least for myself.

Whenever I get involved in a social setting, which deals with one or more people who don't live inside my head (yeah, you read it right - there are voices inside, trying to say many, many things all at the same time, which gets really noisy at times), things had a way of spiraling out of control very fast. One moment you were laughing, the next moment things went whooosh downhill.

Every time I would be replaying the scene in my mind, trying to figure out where the hell it went wrong. The answer would always come shrouded in doubt because I can never be sure of anything. In the end, all I have of the whole process is a lot of bruise I inflict upon my intangible self. Oh, I must've said this, I must've done that. Oh, how could I be so stupid? So careless? How could I cause such trouble?

I wonder where this tendency for self-blame springs from. I wonder why I like it so much. For once, I want to try living without the fear of offending or hurting others. Trying to read people and please them all the time is so tiring, is it not? Perhaps then, without such fear, the self-blame game would stop. The world would cease being such a scary place. I would be able to wave the figurative middle finger without a shred of guilt.

But then, what an unfeeling person I would've become. I don't know if I would be truly happy like that. One suffers and suffers - perhaps it is the best state of humanhood (I know I'm inventing a lot of words right now, but shush) and from it, one's true self emerges.

So what does that say about me? I suffer from a perpetual guilt of failing, which leads to an endless fear about everything. I go through my day with countless scenarios inside my head, minute by minute, a perpetual sort of What Ifs factory, an infinite number of parallel worlds swirling within the universe of one. Imagine how many regrets, big or small, I have. Imagine trying to sleep like that. Imagine having to wake up to that. I truly am amazed that I haven't dashed towards insanity after all this while. 

Perhaps this is normal; meaning, others experience this too. Perhaps this is not unique, this is commonplace and many, many before and after me would've gone through the same tiresome thought process. If it is so, what is our true self? What emerges after the long torture of what-could-have beens?

Logically, I would answer (like the good student I am), "Self-reflection breeds wisdom, applied wisdom breeds enlightenment. Applied enlightenment breeds peace." It sounds good in theory. In fact it sounds perfect, like the answer to everything. If Deep Thought the Supercomputer had to describe 42, it would've said it like that (anyway, digressing a bit here, 42 is a pretty, flat number in my head, like a wooden bench painted white against a white background). But it is easier said than done. Much more so. Hence, the discrepancy between what we know to be ideal and the reality we face is the suffering itself.

Putting it in a formula:                                  Suffering = Ideal - Reality

where the ideal state is the enlightened state, and reality is what we're facing when we are currently unenlightened, hence:
                                                   
                                                      Suffering = Enlightened state - Current state

Epiphany! I've always been confused about how suffering can bring about enlightenment, but I think I might've started to understand it a little now.

So if this is true, at the end of my conscious self, I would've had the chance of finding enlightenment and finally peace. But only if I move on from endless self-reflections to wisdom (and even if I manage to do that, there's still the whole thing about applying wisdom to achieve enlightenment. Life is really not easy, hey?).

Anyway, the whole point of this rambling is to get my thoughts straight. And this is why I love writing. Amidst all of those voices in my head, only mine is heard when I write.

I can finally hear myself speak.

[Pics] Tree of Life, fly away baby

Tree of Life - 10/04/2012

fly away, baby - 10/04/2012

Dwarf's Dream - 10/04/2012

Just some things that I doodled in GIMP. Photoshop is beyond my means so I opt for the next best (free!) thing. ;)

On Sleep

 There's a sickening lurch in my stomach that always coincides with the tides of pressure behind my right eyeball whenever I stay awake past one in the morning. I suppose this is a way my body signals sleep deprivation, a sort of second alert of the impending crash that will happen sooner or later.

The pressure on the eyeball, I can take. But the nausea? I'm a slave to its whims and I know the only way to stop it is to lie down and try to get a shut eye. It doesn't matter that after the eyelids close I still see images in my head, running around, screwing each other, colliding and getting tangled in a mess that cross stories and genres. It matters not. Sleep will come, dreams may or may not, and the nausea will be gone.

Whenever I sleep, I always strive to wake up as naturally and as early as possible. But that's actually a lofty goal because my inner clock is skewed towards the unnatural after years of practiced insomnia.

So I wake up groggy, most of the time, tight-lipped and cursing inwardly (because it just ruins the whole day when your first utterance first thing in the morning/just before noon is a loud, "Fuck!").

Despite all that, I like sleep. Sleep's my friend. Sleep is where I meet interesting things, where my brain shakes itself loose and goes woo-hoo on me. Sleep is nice.

Having said all that, I'm going to bed now.

[Pic] Grassland

Grassland
Medium: Paint + Bamboo Fun
Date of completion: 06/12/2012

[Dream Diary] One

Wacky dreams are the norm for me. If it's not wacky, then I don't dream. This is why I like sleeping so much - the stories there are so much better. I've thought about starting a dream diary, but that's just too obsessive and time-consuming for my taste. Despite the degree of weirdness of the dreams, I try not to analyze them. It's a losing battle because each time I do that, I hear Freud telling me I'm a horrible person. And he's been dead for like, what, a hundred years? That creeps me out.

Hiawatha (Later Rio)

 

last night I had a dream about the child I lost

a hundred times within a single sleep

and his name is Hiawatha

I saw his soft arms

and somewhere in between the cracks

of waking and slipping back, his fingers

met mine and I held them

a thought remained when I woke

how love slips easy

I was shown his room

and a framed picture he treasure

Oh, my God

the soundless recognition of him

rang through me as I perched,

awaiting a sign that it was real

but none came

it was a strange dream

and no,

I didn’t see him anymore

3:29 - Chapter I

I imagined when my heart stopped for three minutes and twenty-nine seconds last year, I had died. But then I came back thanks to a strong cocktail of electric shocks and adrenaline injections and a rather loud litany of, “Live, live, live, live, live!”

That had been the surgeon, by the way, who was an emotional creature. Perhaps he said that to every patient that died on his operating table as part of his gimmick, but it had done the trick in my case. I had returned, my heart was pumping blood again and my brain began reversing its shut down process.

When I came to a couple of weeks later, I realized I had lost few things (mainly the sight and hearing on my left eye and ear) and gained a couple of other things as compensation. The old folks might now call me ‘touched’. Or ‘cursed’. My mom still called me lazy and I was forever ‘Delusional Wombat’ to my dad.   

Losing the sight in my left eye was hard to take and the loss put unnecessary strain on my right eye, so I wasn’t allowed to look at computers or LED screens for too long. That meant no smartphones that could entice me into partaking in the forbidden activity and my time in front of the computer was regulated by an egg timer.

While everybody else talked with their thumbs and other digits, I had to rely on old-fashioned face-to-face speech and passing notes in the class to communicate. My parents also had the initiative of informing the school that I needed to sit at the very front of the class due to this newfound impediment. The school happily obliged.

When I died during those precious minutes, I did not see anything. No tunnel and no light at the end of that tunnel. No horned devils or a scene from hell. No people who had passed away coming back and giving me advice. No angels, not a feather. Not a thing.

But I heard music.

Cooking with Dog!

If there's one YouTube channel that I think is mandatory for everybody to see, it is Cooking With Dog. The reason why I'm making such a statement is because this channel has succeeded in doing what other people have failed to do so far: making me want to cook.

Notice the emphasis on cooking. Usually when I watch a cooking show, at the end of it I'll say, "Oh boy, I want to eat that!" but never "Dang, now I want to try it making it myself!".

Cooking with Dog makes easy-to-follow, step-by-step videos that teaches you how to cook homemade Japanese food. Nothing fancy here, no flaming skillet or super knife skills needed. As long as you have taste buds and a kitchen, you can do whatever they do. Oh, having a Japanese or Asian supermarket near your place is an advantage because you'll need at least some basic ingredients such as cooking sake, hon-mirin and bonito dashi. Everything else, be creative! (Of course this is the part where you don't take me too seriously. My creativity in the kitchen has been a subject of ridicule for years due to the extent of which I substitute one ingredient with another, e.g. egg for water)

On each video, they'll post a list of ingredients in English and Japanese. The instruction itself is narrated by Francis, a cute grey French poodle with superb English. The Chef is a sweet, middle-aged Japanese lady whose deft hands can lull me to dream-like state whatever they are doing, be it cutting onions, mixing soy sauce and dashi stock, or simply just stirring a pot. Her movements in the kitchen are precise and efficient, and they will tell you why they do certain things. For example: when dicing onions, the easiest way is to cut along it but take care to leave the root attached. Rotate 90 degrees then make cuts perpendicular to the initial ones. Finally slice the onion from the end cut and voila! Straight away you'll have diced onions.

See? They got me excited about cutting onions.

I have so far tried three of their recipes: Chawanmushi, Pork Shogayaki and donuts. I'm happy to report that all have been a success, and I'm especially happy with the chawanmushi because it tastes better than what I had in some 'Japanese' restaurant. I will share with you the video here:



If you like Japanese home cooking, do yourself a favor. Try this one out! And of course, watch Cooking with Dog!

Oh, one thing. The channel may be in hiatus right now because they reported that the Chef got into a rather serious accident in January. She's currently in rehabilitation. I wish her a speedy recovery and hopefully she will be back all healthy, all pumped up again to cook! Man, I miss her already!

<3

Housewife

Celebrating International Women's Day 2012. I read this article from The Atlantic and was filled with an urge to write. The resulting piece is as follows:

Housewife

I am a housewife, Sari said. I take care of my husband and children. I have three children. Two sons, she added after a pause, smiling.

Sari's husband was an employee of a state-owned oil corporation. They lived in a two-storey, three-bedroom house with a garage that could fit two cars. Their house was located in one of the suburban development projects outside the metropolitan and it was within easy reach of a hypermall and a wet-market. The children’s school was also close by, just fifteen minutes away. 

Look, Sari said, pointing at a photo of her children. This is Arif, the eldest. He’s in the third-grade now. And this is his brother, Arya, second grade. The little one is Alina, she’s only two. I’m enrolling her in a playgroup next year.

The Coop

They were sitting at Bu Ikawati’s roadside kiosk when the light from the single bulb above their heads went out. “Yaaah, there it goes again,” said one of the men. The others only nodded while sipping their black coffee and puffing cigarette smoke, as if saying it was to be expected.

The smell of kretek, tobacco blended with cloves, filled the air. It was a balmy, sweat-filled night that had been denied rain for weeks. Syarief wiped the back of his neck with his hands. The mosquitoes that had previously gathered around the lone bulb were now making him their target. He swatted them away, only to hit Mansyur and caused his coffee to spill. That earned him a glare, and although they were good friends no words were spoken. His tongue was as heavy as the apology that sat on it. He knew it was there but didn’t bother to let it out.

Conversations were often abandoned at a night like this. Nights where they knew with certainty that the next day would be worse. Still no rain. The rice fields were parched. The longer the drought ran, the longer the silence was. Syarief wondered how many weeks had it been since he’d last seen a hint of drizzle. The riverbed was now as dry as the asphalt road. The soil cracked, the carcasses of their livelihood hung, withered and defeated. They all needed to make do without a harvest this season and the men had been working all sorts of jobs just to survive. These jobs, like the rain, didn’t come easily. Many of his friends and neighbors had been forced to go to the capital Jakarta to scrape a living.