tags: beloved

I am sitting in an airport terminal right now. I got here absurdly early (which is highly uncharacteristic) and I am bored out of my mind.

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She sits five feet away from me, yet it might as well be a light-year
I have no hope of bridging the gap
no hope of filling the chasm
yet still I long…
Perhaps it is only wishing to finish what I started
come to a clean end and get on with my life
But the stillness in my heart keeps me frozen in place
Slowly dying with every breath.
Perhaps it is only wishing to share my heart freely
to worry not of receiving pain and sorrow
but only giving joy and laughter
without counting the cost.
Yet my heart is as heavy as stone, hard as rock
and I grow cold and numb with each passing second
If only I were brave, and the stillness in my heart were broken
then I could do what I needed to do
and face the consequences no matter how dire
I could live.
But I'm not brave.

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October

1997 Oct 1

Non Possum Sperare

You cannot hope, foolish boy with mad dreams
seeking to break the Wheel of Time
and steal the scythe of Death

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1998

July

1998 Jul 11

Forsaken

I've seen a trillion stars
Burning upon the midnight sky
Still hoping for impossibilities
Still wishing for what cannot be
Even as my heart crumbles
Like a dessicated carcass long in the desert sun
Ash, ash, and no hope
Tell me the missteps I've taken
I wish to know what to regret
Much better the particular, specific grief
Rather than this dull, general drear
I trod upon the wayward path
Leading to the endless abyss
The land of the damned
Where the very idea of happiness
Is a ludicrous absurdity
that sets its denizens erupting with mirthless laughter
Oh, how laughter is cruelty
I know it not without its sharp barbs
Laughter which comes from my throat
Knows nothing of joy
and everything of bitterness
Still I dare ask why
I must be
Continue on
As this empty shell of a man
No dreams for tomorrow
I do not wish to stir even today
For the fire in my heart is extinguished
And not even an ember glows
I want nothing
For all I have desired has led to disappointment
And hope has just become another word for despair
I want nothing
But the silent grave of oblivion is slow to creep
Time crawls, inch by inch
I have a hundred thousand days to waste
wanting nothing
And still I will not get what I want
No do not tell me to wait for better times
I know everything about waiting
Waiting leads but to one thing
And that is only more waiting
and waiting to wait
life is only endless waiting
No do not tell me things will get better
For I have hoped with all my strength
wished with all my might
And still I have nothing to show for it
Though I crawl through the mud from sunrise to sunset
And bend my back in hard labor
I am dead
though I must still keep living
I know this is true because I no longer feel anything

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October

1998 Oct 8

Endless Wonder

I am to wonder, I am to wonder
Dreaming of finishing this book
flipping pages until it's over
but it's never over
remembering flames, the buildings all lit up
amidst the burned-out wreckage

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1999

September

1999 Sep 27

Loneliness

Let's talk about loneliness. It is, after all, [redacted]'s birthday, two years since my debacle. I still love her, if you can call my mania love. But I don't know what the point of this is. I suppose I miss the idea of being loved, of being important, in a unique way, to one person alone.

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2000

September

2000 Sep 13

I find it somewhat amusing that the first people to wish me happy birthday were N and A.

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2001

January

2001 Jan 24

Panem et Circenses

Watching TV makes me think of the fall of the Roman Empire, the bread, the circuses, the orgies, the vomitoriums. I guess it's like riding a waterfall [into a cesspool]. TV is an honest-to-God sewer.

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February

2001 Feb 1

Sunlight

It's really just the sunlight, isn't it? I really should get evaluated. I have to learn how to plan things better, too. Maybe I'll get a [PDA] after all?

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2001 Feb 25

Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

Good times for a change. See the life I’ve had would make a good man bad. The Art Institute. Mawage. How water-lilies can drive you insane. Voluptuousness and the Crusades.

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2002

June

2002 Jun 11

Blowing Chunks

Even more fear and loathing in Las Vegas.

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2002 Jun 13

Travelogue

The brain barf begins.

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2003

February

2003 Feb 19

The Edge

More than anything else, this is what I’ll never feel again.

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May

2003 May 26

Yesterday

I can’t stay/And keep living this lie/I finally found the strength to say goodbye/I’m on my way/Nothing can change my mind/I’m leaving behind what we had/Yesterday

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September

2003 Sep 23

galileo and the last day of summer

The Galileo space probe meets its end in the atmosphere of Jupiter. The [last day of summer][x1] always leaves me [cold][x2] [x1]: /2001/09/22/the-last-day-of-summer “The Last Day of Summer • 2001 Sep 22 • Foobar” [x2]: /2001/09/30/last-days “Last Days • 2001 Sep 30 • Foobar”

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October

2003 Oct 23

everything must change

Nothing ever stays the same.

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2004

October

2004 Oct 13

Knowing That the World Was Right

In the light of day, my despair evaporates. with the sun shining, it's hard to imagine the aching sadness, the weight of 10 years of wandering the desert, alone and forsaken, suddenly coming down upon me in the middle of the night, unannounced and unexpected.

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2005

January

2005 Jan 25

masochism

On R's advice (as you can see, I am very suggestible), I headed up to the Central Coast and am hanging around Cambria and vicinity (which includes such places as Cayucos, San Simeon, Morro Bay, San Luis Obispo, Atascadero, Templeton, and Paso Robles, among others.) Mostly, I just want to stare at the sea. (There is clearly something very wrong with me.)

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2006

March

2006 Mar 5

kai "say you’ll stay (jazzy jim remix)"

I thought I had mentioned this before, but I can’t find it in my blog archives. In any case, I swear it seems like sometimes my iPod can read what mood I’m in. On my 2 hour trip back from L.A., it kept pulling up all these down-tempo, super-chill, and melancholy, reflective songs, and while this cheesy song by a Filipino American group may not really fall into this category, it is attached to a somewhat melancholy memory.

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2006 Mar 5

everything but the girl “time after time”

I guess you could say that “Time after Time” is one of my most favorite songs, and I have different cover versions of it attached to various memories. For example, the version by INOJ is attached to the summer after graduating from college, when I tried lingering in the Bay Area, but then ended up going home in defeat. Now that was an extremely depressing time. This was also the time when A and E (whom I mentioned in the previous post) finally actually got together, and I remember hanging out with them and feeling superfluous and stupid. Ah memoreez.

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2006 Mar 23

desperation and despair

Reading random blog posts, I find this sentence incredibly sad:

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May

2006 May 14

an even more perfect sunrise

So, yeah, I clearly have my issues with regards to how things in the past have (and, more relevant) have not gone. I mean, we’re talking a good eight or nine years now of what-never-was and what-cannot-be, and I really can’t think about these things without getting disordered. Er, more disordered than I already am.

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August

2006 Aug 11

self-improvement is masturbation

Neuron by neuron, we are taking the centers out. What I would give to have this as permanent, this not giving a shit about the world. OK, maybe I exaggerate. Even as drunk as I am, I have misgivings.

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September

2006 Sep 4

trying to snap out of it

The thing that I’ve been mulling over is the fact that there have been so many Septembers in the past where I’ve been ever hopeful, with the intent of making a change in my life. And while I know it would be hard to convince many of you, there have been times that I’ve actually acted upon this impulse, only to be rebuffed, or even worse, only to be faced with puzzled indifference.

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2006 Sep 24

equinox

Summer is officially over (despite the fact that today’s high was 76°F and I went out in shorts and flip-flops) and I can’t help but wonder where all the time went. Of course, I don’t know if it’s an artifact of getting old, but it also seems like it’s about a decade since it was June. (Yeah, I’ve been noticing this strange paradox ever since I started residency. The recent past seems simultaneously like it was just yesterday, and like it was 100 years ago. Go figure.)

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2006 Sep 28

starlight (continually redshifted)

gonna buy me a spaceship
powered by dark energy
take me to the outermost reaches
forever chasing infinity

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October

2006 Oct 13

no day but today

There are three musicals that I used to know all the lyrics to: “Beauty and the Beast”, “Once On This Island”, and “Rent” Each one encompassed a particular period of my life, and “Rent” reminds me of my junior and senior year in college, especially because my roommate at the time was quite obsessed with it. Being in college, the Bohemian lifestyle, the conflict between making money and making art—these things all resonated.

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November

2006 Nov 17

definitely broken, and unfixable

What is it in me that drives me to wander the empty ether on a Friday night, bereft of companionship? Why is it that I torture my mind with “could’ve beens”? Or worse yet, things that couldn’t’ve possibly ever happened, they were just thin, dry yearnings escaping from the cracks in my soul, as impossible then as they are now.

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2007

February

2007 Feb 10

a summary of the year thus far

A lot of random little things have happened in the past month and a half that have really sent my brain reeling. In some ways, it feels like Christmas was just a little while ago, when I was wallowing in an irrational, meaningless episode of depression, and ever since it’s been an emotional rollercoaster.

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April

2007 Apr 19

thoughts unbidden

Too late, I cry, remembering time past, running through shadows
echoes of ten thousand lives criss-crossing, folding, twisting, bending
In their wake, I am forsaken
Amidst the jetsam and flotsam of plans gone awry
(and still somehow I made it to land,
even now I make plans and grand schemes
to sail forth from this benighted isle

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September

2007 Sep 5

counterbalance

Last night I dreamt that someone confessed her feelings for me—not that it mattered even in my dream, since she was married and had kids. And she kissed me, leaving me literally floored. It was too late, much too much too late, but to know that all my heartache, all my suffering had not been completely in vain was something of a comfort to me. Even though nothing could change, that bit of knowledge consoled me.

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why this dream now,
disinterring the past
I thought I had buried it deep
buried it well

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2007 Sep 6

rivermaya "himala"

It was 1997 when I first heard this song, on the island of Tablas, in the province of Romblon, awaiting a plane to take us back to Manila.

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2007 Sep 6

Jocelyn Enriquez, Amber, and Ultra Naté "If You Could Read My Mind"

Nine years ago, driving down to San Diego to watch “Dogeaters” at the Mandeville Center on the UCSD campus.

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2007 Sep 7

even farther back

1995: Deep wounds. Ugly scars. And then: new, unfounded hopes and unfulfillable wishes. I learn a secret that, in the end, fucks me up bad, but which I am bound by honor to keep. (And would the outcome really have changed if I had betrayed it? Except for the damnation of my soul?)

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2007 Sep 8

flight

My mood is better now.

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2007 Sep 24

hulogdahon (a brief and fitful storm)

I’ve never been sore from crying before. I mean, literally sore. My recti abdominalis hurt the next morning.

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2008

January

2008 Jan 8

nelly furtado "wait for you"

I'm sure I've heard this song before, but it felt like it was the first time as I drove away from the ocean and made my way onto the freeway.

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March

2008 Mar 9

folly

cracked, but still I've got to keep it together
time out of joint, the sunlight seeps through the window pane
am I coming or am I going
hope is like a little gnat, biting and buzzing
that I can never swat away.

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May

2008 May 5

killing me softly with her song

A little more than a week ago, I watched Lea Salonga perform at Harrah's Rincon.

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June

2008 Jun 24

worn down to little bits and pieces

It is weird to observe new beginnings without actually being part of it. Like when A+E first got together, for example.

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August

2008 Aug 16

route

in this voiceless silence interrupted
by the whirring internal combustion
engines, rubber running across worn-down
concrete, these assemblies of metal growl
past, slashing through the air like two-ton knives
at 70 miles per hour, almost
like the tumult of a rushing river
or waves crashing down on the silver shore
my mind lost in the eddies and whirpools
of wind and debris, as the sunlight streams
in, vainly trying to evaporate
the dark mood crouching upon my soul like
a gremlin ready to ambush and havoc

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September

2008 Sep 5

song dedication

To a woman whom I failed to communicate how I feel about

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2008 Sep 21

the last day of summer always feels so cold

It's been 8 years since this song was released by The Cure. I remember that the first time I heard it, I felt that it captured perfectly my despair from that moment my heart shattered 13 years ago.

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2008 Sep 23

does it make sense to mourn what never was?

Since you and I never came to be—

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2009

March

2009 Mar 20

realization

I will never again want anything as keenly, never again be willing to hurt so deeply, and so never again know such happiness. I guess this is how you die slowly, a heartbeat, a breath at a time.

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2010

April

2010 Apr 6

random completely out-of-context thought on a slow tuesday afternoon at work

It's not much of a sacrifice, to hold back so she could be with the better man, if there wasn't any chance she'd be yours anyway.

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2011

October

2011 Oct 17

somehow shifted

Funny how the random function of my iPod can just make my thoughts go "that a way", to steal a turn of phrase. "I See the Light¹" from the "Tangled" soundtrack started playing, and I started thinking about fairy tales. There has been much ink spilled and many photons shed about how Disney ruins little girls, but maybe it's not really that gender-specific. While it might be argued that Hollywood in general peddles the pernicious idea of "happily ever after", none of the studios inculcates this idea so universally to people at such a young age.

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2012

May

2012 May 20

some people claim that there's a woman to blame, but I know it's my own damn fault

I've spent too much time thinking of might-have-beens, of the garden of forking paths, of the paths forever barred to me
is it a sign that I'm getting old, always looking backward instead of forward, or a sign that I'm still too immature for my age, unwilling to plan for the future, and wallowing in my broken dreams?

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June

2012 Jun 18

what is gone is gone

You can't lose something you never had. And yet, that makes it even worse.

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July

2012 Jul 9

years after it was much too, much too late

It's weird how random memories will sneak up on me. Usually while I'm driving, but I suppose that really shouldn't be that surprising since I live in Southern California, and odds are, I'm in my car.

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2013

April

2013 Apr 9

what if?

It took me a really long time to learn this, but I finally realized that asking "what if?" unilaterally makes no sense. Because it doesn't matter if it never crossed her mind.

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October

2013 Oct 5

life. don't talk to me about life.

I'm sitting here in the dark, totally drunk, recounting my failures and losses. There are a lot of places where it went totally wrong, but I find myself lingering on one of the milestones that I choose to remember. A. I loved you in my fashion. But that is neither here nor there.

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2014

January

2014 Jan 31

maybe it's enough

I dreamt about a woman whom I've had unrequited feelings for. She was hugging me and telling me that we'd always be friends. In retrospect, it was probably for the best. As if it could've turned out any other way.

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