Between Two Points. http://revelationspace.tumblr.com/ 

Poetry/prose. A few writings from between a poetry book. Take a look if you don't mind. :)

A Realization of Some Sorts

It took me some time to realize that I DON'T have to live up to anybody's expectations.
I am my own person, and I don't have to resemble the person beside me, the person breathing next to me, because I can be the snow in the mountain peaks in Italy when it's January, or the melody in someone's voice. People often want to see wonder in someone, trying to grasp something, but when we look into someone's eyes we only see our reflection and that's the best kind of wisdom I can offer you. We are never too diminutive, never too insignificant. You could be an ant in another life and you would still be important. There will always be purpose, no matter what you were told to believe in, what adults have spun in your head as you grew out of your favorite Mickey Mouse blouse and into prom dresses. Nobody's standards will ever fit you, because you're designed to shrug the limits, the burdens, the heavy weight of numbers, off of your shoulders and live. You don't have to be anybody for anybody. You don't have to wake up and impress the boys you think you're ought to be pretty for. You're a breathtaking piece of art, yes, but you're also a human being with emotions and thoughts and complexity and no set of algorithms is going to solve you. You. Are. That significant to me. To everybody who knows you. Don't be angry if the people around you misunderstand you because they don't deserve your anger. They don't deserve your anything, then.

How Do I

Recently I've been sucked in the world of words. I don't think I've really experienced a full-blown epiphany in my whole life but I think the realization of wanting to entrench myself in a thousand, colorful worlds has been the closest I can get to something like that.

You see, I don't really know why but I've been having the hardest time expressing myself verbally. I swear it's like I have these things I want to say but when they escape my mouth it's like they ooze out languorously, and it's deeply saddening sometimes that I have to think about how immersed I used to be in the meaning of my sentences, and not how I deliver them. Because these days I'm definitely too careful about how I can further improve my grammar at the moment and not about how my emotions can bridge to others by just letting them transform into vocabulary. I guess this is what they say about how life changes and how it changes you and how you change over time. I've been noticing things but most of them are external and not a lot of them are very introspective, frankly, and it worries me that I won't ever get back what I could almost always do before -- write passionately, write figuratively, write on my own terms, write because I desire to express. There's a lot of things inside me that I wish I could express but I find it troubling to find any other way than this to release the tumult in me, or, when I'm happy, the sun bursting in my heart, eating me alive with its rays of elation.

Cold

I'm not going to say I'm skilled enough to deal with my emotions, a tangle of debasing complexities. I myself do not think I'm as complex as I wish I were, and I know that I can marginalize my entire self into a black and white anatomy, a melange of narrow and wide, fat and thin muscles. What is so depressing about me? Is it my unwillingness to accept reality as it is? Is it the way I perceive what I observe? Most of the time I haul myself into razor sharp danger zones, toxicities in the air, in the earth. God, I'm so lost for words. And to lose myself is to lose my future, is that it? Will I ever transform into art itself? Isn't the way my lungs suck air in and shepherds it out an example of art? Tell me why the heart aches so badly. Tell me why the mouth bends downwards. Tell me why the day seems so short, and when night finally meets with the sky I am so wastefully useless, curling into what is the travesty of a fetus into a bed that feels like it was made out of the bones of the monsters that haunt me while I am awake. Or is it the net, the online forums and web pages, that cause such disturbance in myself? What do I block? Is there an accurate portal I need to seal? Like the spaces in my keyboard, or the holes on the horizontal sides of my heads. How will I ever complete what is missing if I am blind to what is lost.

Lo

HI HELLO.

I'm supposed to be doing my Filipino project right now but I got distracted by the Internet once again and now I'm back here. I mean, I can't really apologize for blacking out and ignoring this for almost, what, FIVE/SIX/SEVEN MONTHS, but after realizing that I'm not so far into losing myself I have "risen from the dead." It's quite funny that there are only three days left before Christmas and so MUCH has happened lately and you can assume that I am actually doing okay.

So yes I plan to write more and more. I've missed a lot.

Update

Hi. I haven't been logging in as often as I used to, and I would almost like to apologize. But I won't, really, because although I have missed writing -  have missed Blogspot-blogging - I've been able to take a look at things. Grasp them, even. I like writing when the nights are cold and blustery and when I'm halfway through a book I can or can't finish. Then I abandon the almost accusatory glare of PERNICIOUS THINKING, white text that swallows me up when I can't swallow. I like the purpose, the potential, the essence of writing - of words - but I do not miss it when I leave it behind for a while.

But I thought it would be lovely to keep track of happenings. Currently, I am doing a most honorable job avoiding the camera that sits on my bedside table. It keeps 600+ photos of Singapore, which I gladly, happily, fell in love with. Singapore is small but lively, a fast-paced city and country. The escalators, especially ones in LRTs, flow up and down in stress. The hurry is contagious, the movement infectious. Sooner or later you begin to cope with the hushed up frenzy, and, travelling through the streets and mimicking the pace, you know you're pathetically sweating. But it's all good. Amidst the exhaustion is a flurry of excitement, and that's probably what you feel when out and about in somebody else's home. Or maybe that's how I entangled myself in Singaporian ice cream wedged in between two tenuous biscuits. I'll say it again - a flurry of excitement.

But I have to be honest that as of the moment I don't feel as smiley as I did back in Singapore and its boat rides. Recently I've been feeling quite down. In moments where my happiness shines through in shorts of laughter, I often find that my happiness has depended on other people's almost entirely. I madly search for reactions, gauge those, and I expect a level of gratification. And I'm thinking that maybe that's all I'm really depending on. Somebody else's opinions, frequently somebody's acceptance or rejection. Be hostile around me, I feel ostracized. Maybe I've lost the ground, and if I had then I should get it back. Find home, retain it, set it free only when nobody is looking. I don't feel liberation, the cause of this may or may not be by the remaining days of vacation left. But I am doubtful. Nonetheless, I feel terribly empty. How many times have I said this? Black and white. Decaying, almost to the point of unrecognizable monstrosity, reckless negligence. Am I a victim of unrelenting narcissism to the point that I can't care about the damage under my skin? I am not sure about narcissism, but I am sure about being shy, about anxiety, about the absence of composure and stable structure. About introspection. I feel militant, but I feel powerless. I might not greedy for weaponry, but I am greedy for might.

I don't know what I'm talking about anymore.

Thinking

This is me, this is you, this is all of us, and I can never do justice this way.

Often wondering if I end up in one way or another, I try to measure all that I almost am - from the words I omit to the thoughts I damn from evolving into action, into consequence. And I hope I'm recording things right, and being right, but I can never be so sure. I know that if I force myself into knowing my limits and boxes and talkative expectations that I will soon lose my restraint and self-control, my sanity - opposing what, I do not know - but this is somewhat untrue, because I am not a girl in a book, a boy in a movie, a stereotype alone, and I only sometimes want to "break free." (Note: You don't have to relate.) I am my own being, no matter what tests and certificates declare, and I am like you. No matter who you are. I am fiction, I am real, I am a person. I can contradict, I can submit. And I hope I am more than a list of characteristics offered on paper.

I am not different, but I believe even the most shallow-sounding people are complex and deep in ways we can't see.

If my perception is wrong, I would want to know why. Is my perception invalid? Erroneous in opinion... or fact? But what is perception?

I can touch worlds in me, and others too, but I know where I am within.

I am not a hedonist and I trust my thinking more than my feeling. I know the world suffers and that it screams although I may not hear it in my sleep. I know you suffer and that curves of teeth and gums don't always translate into happiness. I know how to keep quiet, and how to twist silence (borrow into them, squeeze them out of their bones), but I will never know why someone looks at me unless I pry into their space and ask. "Why are you looking at me?" bears a strong difference from "Why do we suffer?" and "Why do we want to please?", but I can't gracefully bend my questions into the vastness of a blank document, into the aligned structure of a paragraph. I can't eloquently caress my feelings, the knitting together of my brows, into a breath of self-expression. I am stuck, yet off-kilter, and I may as well be living with life like this.

But I don't want to live with life. I want to live life. I want to live in it, make it mine, trust these compounds, break them maybe, and defy death thinking I can. Knowing I can. Trusting myself to jump when I feel like I am ready.

I fear jumping, but I do not fear heights.

My 3 AMs

It's 3 in the morning. I usually know it's time for me to sleep when I start to get annoyed by myself, with all the little things I see and think of. I thought that it would be nice to write about how I feel at 3 in the morning, or how I think around this time.

Or I can try.

I'm supposed to be asleep - to be swept away by the wings of rest. I think I really need sleep, and I know I do need to shut down, but I can't when all the quiet I have always wanted to consume and bathe myself in is flickering across the walls, beating against my heart, running back and forth. The quiet has always been what I wanted. Peace and rumination, an introspective look at things. But as much as I want to entirely hide myself in 2 AMs and lava lamps and sleeping faces, I am in need of noise. Noise so pure and hoarse and disturbing. Noise a rage, a fire, a trumpet. And I wouldn't want to torture myself, but I already am. You may call me a perfectionist because I want to perfect my commas and my periods, but I lack in all the points where I should excel. And there comes the feeling that I am old and dusty, useless and never valued, where I am nothing but a nondescript building in a street of color and promise, future and innovation. But no, I am not meant to be used, but I think I should let feelings use me. How can I free myself and learn the heart's ways while I am chained to logical thinking? And am I even a logical thinker? And am I pushing myself too much? I want to be the emotions I wish to describe, but all I can be is a weak emulation, a copy, of other people's fears and ambitions. No, no, I have my own fears and ambitions, but they burn down into nothing but wanting to be someone else, someone different, someone who trusts their heart more than their mind.

At 3 AM I feel sad because I can't embrace diversity well enough, and because I don't know what to think of anymore. I perplex myself to the point of numbness and self-pity. And by the time I wake up a few hours later I will regret using my time imprudently, regret feeling wrong when I could have felt so right, regret feeling insipid when I could have worked on being creative, regret letting the dark yank me off the track of my head. I do not want people to know I burn at 3.30 in the morning, but I do, and I wish for change although I hate it. I need fluency, but I want it too much more.

Don't think so much. Don't edit too much, don't rephrase too often, or else you'll end up rewriting all your sentences to their thoughts, and words won't feel natural. You won't feel natural. You will feel stained and besmirched. Blemished and complicated, not complex. You will feel worse, and you will worsen. You will feel unoriginal, and you will feel like nothing. And nobody would want that, even your favorite enemies. The night can breed demons, and it will, but nothing is as flammable as 3 AM.

Summer and Warmth

Summer has feverishly swum into April with a kind of fiery madness that likes to knock you into sleep and lure you into the bathroom for a very cool and much needed shower. Splashing water on your face is a nirvana and greedily gulping down a glass of water is a blessing. It has rained a couple of times this past week. I welcomed the rain with open arms, although I just sat in the foyer bobbing my head to music. I am always enamored with the smell of rain. It embraced me through open windows and billowing curtains, droplets shy and lingering. My diminutive friends.

But right now it isn't raining and the house is a furnace. I am roasting. Two stand fans are standing in two corners. I'm about to watch Hannibal NBC episode 4 although the link I have may be phony (it turns out it isn't - yay!). The heat is hypnotizing me into a dreamy state, the silent brr of the fans a cat's purr and the sun a blinding gold and immaculate white. I've been hanging onto winter through Eowyn Ivey's The Snow Child, a wintry mixture of joy and longing, and I can almost taste the dazzling intricacy of snowflakes, the snow angels mirrors of the guardians we can be. 2.30 in the afternoon and I am gasping for a bed of ice, a welcoming reprieve from the onslaught of summer.

But! I love the night, the nights. Although they could be hot and humid too, the darkness feels somewhat full and deep, a mirage of shadows and esoteric magic. I like the night because the village is humming but quiet, a heap of sleepy sighs and breaths or, if not that, a chatter in some certain lots, a feast for the ghouls of night. It's funny how things have an opposite, an anti or a pro, and I like that. It keeps the world interesting. It keeps people busy and sane.

Before I end this shamefully brusque post I want to share with you what was meant to be the whole point of this entry. At first I didn't know what to write about so I liked to enumerate three videos I've been watching/have watched the past few nights while I had my headphones on and felt at least a little bit happy. Mirth. And warmth. Always with the warmth.


1. Call Me Maybe (Hannibal NBC)

Hannibal NBC is very serious and stars enough blood and darkness that make me squirm and frown. So this is a glacial and merry reprieve from all that horror and tight suspense, although there are some scenes that do suggest humor (but that may also be based on who's viewing the show). I am wary of Dr Lecter and my compassion for Will Graham is lengthy in words I can't express. 

Countless of fanmade work make me giggle. This is one of those things.

2. Bastille - Of The Night (Live at Scala)

Courtesy of YouTube user Colonel8Custard who recorded such a good performance. For some unknown reason I can't insert the video here so I'll establish a link in its place. 

I discovered the Bastille band just recently and I am glad I did! They had covered Corona's Rhythm of the Night and here they play it live with zest. The drumming washes a grin upon my face, and as we near the end of the video I cheer along with the crowd because I can.

3. On thin ice 4 

I watch with amazement. I cry because this man is who I want to be when I am 48.

Blow Your House In

I'm going to try to string my thoughts together.

Your cheek grazes the pillow, your eyelashes blink in the blistering sun, your head runs a current of waves, and yet you feel like nothing, like you're moving but you're not animated - your heart is self-destructive and your lungs are ripping open, and you can't choose to breathe or not to breathe, because you feel empty. hollow. and the empty and hollow are spaces for spit and bricks, for dog-chewed sandals and construction sites, for rubble and layers. Layers layers layers to cover up a whole which is you.

Do you ever feel empty
even when your playlist runs jubilantly - and your heart leaps and tumbles across the floor in smatterings - while the seconds pass, and music is your lullaby and it's proud to be. You ponder why. You'd kill to know why the sun likes to grow from dust and soil and scorch itself into your eyes, yet you still feel like ash and stones, and your cuts and bruises can't catch up with the glow that burns you inside out.
Do you ever wonder about what would happen
if your sewing kit would come to life one day, and pools of red thread would run in between your fingers, and your toes ear lobes tongues, without preamble without consent?, and stitch into you, painstakingly one by one, by needles made rusty by Father Time. You'd be resurrecting from a robe of magma, smoke a cough from your chimney throat, delicate in sinew but rigid in stance. Hot angry cobblestones in summer daylight. And you'd be a wall of blood - magnificent, dazzling, stunning, horrendous. Envisage Red Riding Hood, envision her in between Wolf's razor sharp teeth - flesh a palette of striped peach and red good for a stew. You are grisly art.
Do you ever feel like a teardrop
ruminating about falling upon an eyelash, sliding off a cheekbone, the length of an elegant neck, and pausing by the chin to dwell as if in the Father's house. To swell, as a balloon does. To fall in a push, that is after you pop after you run out the door. This is consistency at its best - a million other teardrops line up to rest, by the loops of cursive writing so smooth and so possessive and by the pulse of living poetry so dear yet so dreadful, sinking into a moleskin pad. Suicide by gravity, the final bang of depression. The stains you leave point to constellations unnamed. You are pain at its summit, you are salt, you are exhausted.

You are collected,
but you are fallen.