July 2011
1 post
Okay, world...
Where are you fucking hiding the gold stars/like button/+1 for 10/20/30 year life plans that are underway/unseen/silently/steadily working? ‘Cause people are hyping up shit that is immediately forgotten when the next page loads. But laying down the foundation for the future, shit that actually lasts…yawn, that shit ain’t tangible, instantly gratifying, and b-oring.
Fuck this...
June 2011
1 post
Aha.
So, I stumbled upon a recent pic of Halle Berry rockin’ a black, midriff baring dress, and I wanted to wallow in depression. Coz she’s fucking in her 40s and more fit than I can ever hope to be. Goddamn.
But I looked at pictures of myself, age 21, long, silky haired (from rebonding), projecting sexyface but being DEEPLY insecure and totally un-sexual. 5 years later, I chopped my...
March 2011
2 posts
Waxing rhetorical.
Can’t sleep after realising that the void that I’ve been filling with TV, internet, food and cigs turns out to be…
Authentic self-love and acceptance.
When you have spent your life performing for others and end up in a room all by yourself, do you know the person behind the masks, wigs, and makeup? What makes her genuinely happy, and not just deliver an addiction-based...
February 2011
1 post
Shy.
An unsent email to one of my friends. I felt…quite immersed in the song’s moment when I was composing the message, and I hesitated to forward the actual email. It made me feel…vulnerable. I have dear friends, and at times I retract my impulses at the last minute. How this city has changed me….
Hey,
You know, “To Build A Home” is really growing on me. It...
January 2011
6 posts
(tell me) how to disappear.
I don’t do jack shit on my fbook anymore, and looking at the “People You May Know” page (the spawn of boredom + curiosity), I just realized that it’s a yearbook of folks who don’t really like me (I think so, ‘cause I don’t like them…!):
- I couldn’t fit in high school because they all thought I was pretending to have a Western upbringing (you...
Full of hate.
So I have come to the realization that my inner resentments (anger directed towards people I know) has reached its limit. It’s a rational conclusion, you see; you can only harbour so much hatred until it consumes you.
It only dawned upon me now that I am overflowing with hatred and resentment. Who knew hating people is a habit?!
Everyone around you continues to live their lives until...
Clingon.
Holding onto old habits because they’re comfortable. Or is it because the holding pattern is too long?
I miss being what my dear friend P says: that I add spice to life. I don’t feel that way here, land of prudent spending and saving for my future. But living in a first-world country usually means a higher life expectancy. So, conserve your resources when you can while living in the...
Yesterday was hearted.
I had the most awesome New Year’s Day! :D
had brekky with my folks at their place…and they didn’t have to force me to go to church! Whee! Just enjoyed their company over tasty food.
had second brekky/brunch at the most awesome diner in the world (within a few blocks from our pad) with the most awesome roommates…I had the special which was indeed special: pulled pork...
Wistful.
Stay just a little bit more/
Don’t let my heart turn sore
(…i like the ukelele sound. Eee. <3)
Listen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FoawPe7O-no
Bean counting.
What is up with this obsession to categorize and summarize shit?!?
Anyway, highlights of 2010 in bullet points:
progressing from shoulder length curly hair to undercut, highlighted, almost pixie ‘do
maximizing summer with Welsh friends
bonding with roomies
single malt scotch whiskey (now fave: Glenmorangie)
the discovery of cutting damo with yosi = genius!
surviving 1 year of...
December 2010
9 posts
Things we say to ourselves.
Toc-toc-toc-toc.
I am inside a jeepney, bags in hand, everything in a wash of desert yellow, and I focus on the sound. It’s the sound a knife makes when it comes in contact with a plastic chopping board.
Toc-toc-toc-toc.
The sound of breakfast prep. I am on my parents’ couch. God knows what time it is.
My mother squeals while reading an email from her former co-worker turned...
Ugleh duckling.
Sometimes, I’m positively convinced that my primary school experience was a social experiment. I grew up being race-blind, only to painfully realize in secondary school that regular folks tend to cling to their race (and subsequently, their clans attached to race) like a lifevest on open water.
I discussed this with my bro a couple of days ago, who was shaped by the same upbringing, and...
Your answer.
Dear Clamshell,
Perhaps it was one sided, in some way or another…hmm?
Love,
Your inner dialogue
Clamshell.
I wonder if I should be happy that I am still not jaded. I still get hurt when I step into the world of grey.
I reach out for friendship, they close the door; keep me at a safe distance. I am not used to rejection. I feel inadequate. Was not there a sense of friendly intimacy? Was it, is it, all a farce? Why do I keep on trying to reach out? Shouldn’t I have learned from rejections past?
...
well pleased.
I don’t appreciate Peter Pan syndrome because I’ve been waiting for so gddamn long to become an adult that I relish being one. “I want to protect my little child” = child wanting to bust out at every possible opportunity.
I’d like to say that being an adult gives a feeling of entitlement: “I can do the fck I want, given the resources available to me. I can...
disappoint.
i’ve been doing that to a couple of folks i know.
strange how getting older means seeing people’s BS for what it is.
sometimes, i wonder if i’m inflicting karma on one of them: here’s to not being there for you when you weren’t there for me.
obviously not yet a full-fledged adult.
Yellow brick road.
December 10, ‘10: Every day, it feels more like home. A place - home - not just people home. It is remarkable for me for a place to feel like home as I move places so often.
Not bad for almost 3 years of living in vancity. It took me 9 years for certain parts of the p.i. to feel like home…such a hostile environment for non-conformists! shudder And the irony is that a lot of Filipinos...
Nulliparous.
I like the term. It feels like a negation. Empty space.
Thus, bullet points (on the side of long-ish) on why I prefer to keep it that way:
- You know how you can leave a cat locked up in a house alone as long as you leave them food? Well, did you know you can do that to 4 year olds as well? I spent a lot of my “formative” years locked up at home, with food in the kitchen (or in my...
November 2010
8 posts
I've never been good at chess.
Temptation for me is balancing it between my lips, cupping one hand over the end to ward off the (sometimes imaginary) draft, flicking the lighter and taking a deep drag. A few seconds, an overwhelming calm, I am outside my body.
Half of a second cigarette later, I am filled with regret. Rather, the nicotine seizes my throat and I want to claw off the sandy grains trapped in every crevice. This...
Suckin' it up.
Chalk it up to “things I wish I learned in uni:”
Personal success takes several years, 3 years or 5 or 10; to measure success within 1-2 years turns hard work into a fad.
You are not your mistake. Mistakes are part of the process of finding what you want. Mistakes are not who you are, not the essence of your self.
Beauty is not objectification. People are not objects, nor should...
Call center.
Dear valued customers,
Congratulations. After 20 years, you have effectively developed our ‘85 model that has no option for failure.
During the yearly model checkup, we discovered that your dissatisfaction with our product is because said model has participated in the following to no avail:
baking “artisan” cakes: best saved for special occasions because mass market...
Who's there?
Your silence is my closure.
Never felt the urge.
I still cannot distinguish children from parasites, be it fetuses or adults. Nevertheless, I reject it anyway; I have had almost two decades of Catholic Guilt socialising, but bearing and raising children is still an alien concept to me.
What benefit would I gain for sacrificing my personal happiness and well-being for a parasite that will draw blood from me for at least 20 years? You can pass...
knock knock.
so if i sent a “nonchalant” message to the dude i had an affair with 4 years ago, like “hey, sup dude?”, does that mean i get in touch with the rest of the dudes i had relationships/flings with?
“hey, let’s be friends” = wth?!
what makes x dude special from y dude? i have no clue as to what i want to find out. to be reminded of how clueless i was to the...
October 2010
8 posts
Vancitisms.
Number 1: Why van-hipster-ites are so f’in skinny: vegetarian “but i eat fish for protein,” neighbourhoods with veggie restos, local cafes, only 1 fast food chain coz of political implications of eating fast food (and a fast food combo is more expensive than a combo from a mom-n-pop japanese resto)…aaaand, anemia, y’all!
Number 2: So cold, cold, cold: living in...
Spurts.
It’s raining really hard at 2:24 am here in Vancity.
I love the sound of the rain bouncing off the rooftop. So glad to be inside, to be soothed by the steady beat of the raindrops.
To think that 10 degrees Celsius on a cloudy, rainy day “isn’t that cold.” Surreal.
Thoughts on "collaboration."
(Been AWOL, starting to become “as usual.”)
Push back at me once more, and I’ll bitch smack you so hard…
Thoughts over orange juice.
There’s nothing embarassing about wanting to escape. In the physical world we move in, there are larger forces that we cannot possibly control. Or worse, that these larger forces control our lives with such ferocity that we have to trot alongside them and obey their rules, with clenched teeth. What can we control? Our fantasies, our inner worlds. Flight is easier than fight, and we can feel...
Good 'ol days.
The realization that we all have to keep moving forward with our lives leaves a dull ache in my belly. The past seems so safe and guileless, no thanks to the tricky way memories work, but yesterday is only the today that has passed; wallowing on past memories without working will leave you hungry soon enough.
And to take up full responsibility for one’s life, I find that to be an...
September 2010
3 posts
Neat.
I agree with Ala’s post, as I feel the same way.
I miss writing in the way that I violently pry open my skull and wave around the grey matter so that I will feel less pain in keeping it inside (my sanity? *suppresses chortle*), but…containment feels…liberating. Sometimes, the way I write is in spurts, the pregnant truth remains deep in my mind, but it is for me alone to ruminate...
August 2010
14 posts
Rambly.
3:20 am
I was awash with weightless optimism…and then I hit Command+V.
I have not changed.
3:27 am
I felt my insides tighten. I stretch my neck, leaning to my left, I hear a little crack. Looking up at the white ceiling, I scold myself. Get a grip. It’s only yourself you’re talking to.
Even to my own thoughts, I hold myself back.
3:29 am 3:31 am
Have you heard of the song...
Punk'd.
So I swallowed some courage and got my hair cropped in such a way that I’m forced to mess around with it more.
I think a lot of what impedes creativity has to do with laziness and self-doubt. It’s liberating to be thrust into creative activity itself, struggle to keep afloat, and then ease into the ebb and flow of it. It’s so easy to be paralyzed into overthinking, especially...
I like it, I like it. (Come here, baby)
“U seem perplexed I haven’t taken u yet/
Can’t u see I’m harder than a man could get/
I got wet dreams comin’ out of my ears/
I get hard if the wind blows your cologne near me/
But I can take it, coz I want the whole nine/
This ain’t about the body, it’s about the mind”
(Lyrics taken from Google)
I woke up today.
I just realized that I wasted a year of productivity and almost indulged agoraphobia by following the footsteps akin to a Prozac user. The haze is gone, and my regret is that it took a year instead of exploring other options sooner (habits are hard to break.)
It also scares me how much capitalism I have tolerated…in terms of witnessing how individuals and cultures have been capitalised on,...
The Man.
This is what we tell you/
How to feel/
This is real/
This is beautiful/
This is music/
In a cadence that is safe/
That is easy to emulsify/
Homogenize/
The way you sanitize is violent/
You kill off everything that is me/
I see through you/
I no longer know what to make of your/
Images/
What is real/
What is beautiful/
What is music
The terrible twenty-somethings.
I used to draw, then doodle, be considered as weird, loud, hyper. Then shut in my own world, suicidal, stressed, lost in an anime world and fanfic- alt. reality. Then, my first boyfriend, a religious exploration, thrust into normalcy and then shut myself back into an isolated bubble of fundamentalism. Liberation, then, rebellion. Sexual exploration, plunging into unhibitied impulsiveness. Then,...
Empathy.
It has finally dawned upon me, after flipping through Marie Claire’s September edition in North America, why the Olsen twins brandish tight-lipped smiles:
When you have made a career out of smiling like the cheerful, ignorant monkey performer part they created for you, the choice of not having to display a toothy smile, on cue, is positively liberating.
And it is.
That Heart song.
Being alone terrifies me in the same way as when you first turn on the shower and the water smacks against your nakedness.
“…!! Gadammit, it’s so fracking cold! $&@#%*!!!”
(okay, minus the swearing.)
But once the hot water envelopes you in a comforting reverie, the initial shock is forgotten.
I am immersed, absorbed, in art and I do not feel lonely.
Your melodies.
Songs become dangerous when you fill them with your own meaning. Just like how I can only listen to a particular cover by Tori Amos. I thought I could go back but the original’s opening chords bring me back and I have to stop lest I…
Positively giddy.
I wish I could listen to music all night.
I feel
Sexy
Happy
Alive.
It has been almost a year since I have felt alive.