unwell

i am back where i started.

a few months ago i was in the same hospital room sitting on a sofa which doubles as a makeshift bed. taking care of a sick partner. routinely questioned awkwardly of my relation with the patient by medical staff.

friends say its my karma. when they're feeling generous they tone that down to a role i was born to play.

 they say: i am mother theresa tending the sick. i am florence nightingale bringing comfort to the infirm. i am juliet binoche-character in the 'english patient'. (i'm partial to the last one since it makes me a french actress that made it to hollywood which, let's face it, better than a saint or a glorified nurse.)

 

i don't mind. really i don't.

born into a family with siblings with epilepsy and another one with cerebral palsy and autism plus a chain-smoking father with alcohol problems, i am no stranger to people being unwell. it has surrounded me all my life. no wonder my earliest memories include depressive moments of pondering on death as a toddler. i suppose i that made me weird.

everytime someone close gets sick, i feel irrational guilt. why not me?

and when i touch them i say a quiet prayer (and i don't even pray), please take it away. give it to me. i am stronger.

i guess i'm back to where i started even before the time i endured keeping a relationship alive with a man who keeps on getting sick because he drank too much. even after he has left, back to the wife he told me he has divorced, i am back.

i wonder if i have been a virus or some bacteria in a previous life to justify this payback.

this is a new man in my life. and now he's not well and i'm back to the hospital. thinking if i should succumb to thinking the more things change the more they stay the same.

but somehow things are different. now i have to deal with a more demanding patient and i actually like it. and when he says he will try to be well, i actually believe it.

am sick of being scared by my own ghosts. thing is, from the outside, i am healthier than ever. my infirmities are not manifest. maybe somebody needs to 'english patient' me to unravel the bandages that hide the damages.

forgiving love's defective vision

once upon a time, three friends (whose identity will remain hidden to protect the innocent and guilty alike) met for coffee. much like many group of friends before, conversation inevitably steered to ‘significant-other-bitching’ at one point.

friend 1, laments that he is so tired of his partner being selfish and never considering the situation from the other’s perspective.

friend 2 asked, ‘did you not know this before you made a commitment to be in a relationship with him?’

to which, of course, friend 1 did. and, being in the safe environment of friends, admitted to reluctantly.

friend 3 offered that this may not be intentional. it is simply his partner feeling free to express himself and from his point of view, his behaviour may not necessarily be selfish or inconsiderate, it just being – well, himself.

friend 1 said, ‘if that is so, then he doesn’t get me.’

all three fell silent for a while, lost in their thoughts.

friend 2 started asking why is it that many times our lovers don’t get us and our friends effortlessly do.

friend 3 (the psychologist in the group) explained that friendship is defined by commonality while love by fascination, requiring a level of mystery – thus the unknown.



this conversation stuck with me long after the caffeine has left my system. i asked myself many times:

is this true? in a relationship, are we all doomed to spend the rest of our lives (if we’re lucky) with a person who by virtue of their love for us, will never understand us?

like many dillemas before me, i can deal with it as long as i understand it. so i tried to ponder the issue a bit more.

after much thought, i figured that when you love somebody, you’re interaction is limited to the minute distance of intimate spaces. this closeness, while allowing for perspective that reveals stark detail, can only focus on a limited space at a time and inhibits a view of the complete picture. much of which is lost and the rest suffers from the haziness of peripheral vision. love is not blind. it is just that love when actualised, suffers from tinges of myopia, sometimes hyperopia or even tunnel vision.

viewed from this angle, this short-sightedness is not an absence of empathy but a testament of one’s intimacy.

comforted by the thought, i now listen to ani difranco’s song, thinking i have the answer to her question:

‘he didn’t understand me
but i don’t know why i didn’t go
he didn’t understand me
and he had every chance to know.’

he loved you and he cannot see all of you because you are too near. but he sees you in a way no other cannot.

a fair trade-off? maybe not.

but for me, a macro-lensed witnessing of my life (warts, scars and all) is as important as affirmation i receive from those who view the soft light, airbrushed image i present to the rest of the world. believing that those warts, scars and all that i endeavour to conceal define me more than the complete picture and may not be so repulsive, when viewed with love.

losing you

this is something i wrote back in college. thought i'd just post something to break the silence.


if time would go back I would find you a person of no consequence.

in my life you were the only person who can tell me, “i know you.” it did not happen in a blink of an eye. we worked on it, little by little, like pasting plaster to a beloved statue, we’ve come to cherish our shared galatea. i treated you with more warmth, love and respect than any other person in this world.

did that frighten you?

well, it frightened me.

so i started hitting you with pretentious anger, pummeling fists of hatred that were intended to be more violent than they have ever been. so there were those terrible battles of two entwined souls confused and threatened by the onslaught of fabricated calamities sure to extinguish the flickering light of intimacy. “i’m scared, let’s stop this,” – i thought. “fuck, I don’t give a damn,”- i mouthed.

why did you not hear my unspoken plea for a truce? why did you not listen to the resonance of my bruised spirit unable to halt what it regretfully started?

i lost.

did you know that?

will you ever know?

in the final exodus of understanding coaxed by fear, pride and distorted sense of self-preservation, i lost you.

and in losing the being enmeshed to my soul i lost a part of myself bigger than is worldly possible. you cannot tell me, “i know you,“ now. for i am just an insult to the person you helped into being.

damn.

if time will go back i will find you a person of no consequence.

horsing around

i’m sure none would admit that you intend to go through life just horsing around.

a few weeks ago, the inimitable merman asked me and a bunch of friends if we are interested in watching repertory philippines’ staging of shaffer’s equus. the gay bunch was busy so it ended up that it was jp, me and the merman.

to those unfamiliar with the play, i can’t be bothered to write my own synopsis so i ‘cut and paste’ imdb’s:

‘A psychiatrist, Martin Dysart, investigates the savage blinding of six horses with a metal spike in a stable in Hampshire, England. The atrocity was committed by an unassuming seventeen-year-old stable boy named Alan Strang, the only son of an opinionated but inwardly-timid father and a genteel, religious mother. As Dysart exposes the truths behind the boy's demons, he finds himself face-to-face with his own.’

deep, eh?

the truth is (and to assure you that i haven’t gone all artsy-fartsy highbrow on you), the play gained notoriety because of the lengthy scene in the second act involving nudity. in fact, harry potter’s – daniel radcliffe made headlines and billions of internet picture downloads when he took to stage as strang, announcing to the world that the boy that played potter has, err, grown up. the nudity is such that on the way out, the merman told me –‘ i hope people don’t think we paid the cost of the ticket to see cock’.

but i digress.


the reason i am writing about this is the crux of the play – at least for me – resonates with a question i have been asking myself for sometime. that is, ‘is a life without passion an acceptable loss for a life of normalcy?’

actually, such succinctness and gravity of questioning was more the play’s rather than mine. when i asked my friends about it, it was framed rather lamely with ‘do you still have a goal?’ and i ask this because more and more i am thinking that lately, it feels like i have none.

when i started working, fresh from student activism, my goal was to make a significant contribution to the rural poor. when i joined government, i aimed at being a part of those who introduced meaningful reforms in the bureaucracy. failing at that, i went to africa looking to regain my soul. after 8 years, i came back home wanting to retire. now, realising that i have, at least, 10 productive years in this deadly, if weary, body, i’m stumped.

i asked jp and he started essaying the ‘good’ i am doing for others. i said, that’s debatable – but even if it is true, doing good fulfils the receiver. the giver is satisfied only obliquely through some form of inverse vanity. i doubt if my goal is that.

when asked, id went on a discourse about ‘helpers’, ‘those who need to be needed’ and ‘altruists’, differentiating them in terms of social psychology and linking it to evolutionary ‘survival of the fittest’. if that did not make sense to you, suffice to say this was 3 am and its either id was already too drunk to make sense or i was to understand.

j, my man of the moon, asked,’ why is it important? maybe the journey is more important than the destination.’

l, the other half of my small team at work quietly says, ‘maybe you need to define what you mean by retirement. after all, being in a place where you can afford to rest is a valid goal.'

there were others equally insightful perspectives i got from others but none of them seem to assuage the restless feeling i have inside.

and then i watched the equus and i realised it is possible i am asking the wrong question.

the thing is, i have goals. they may be not as single-minded as before, but they are there. the feeling of listlessness emanates not from its absence but from the feeling of losing passion.

in the play, Dysart, the psychiatrist, called it ‘professional menopause’. the lack of ‘worship’. something that happens to you as you become more trained. as you age, perhaps. you cease to wonder or be surprised. you think the outcome will never be good or bad but always something in between and there’s very little you can do to influence it.

sad? perhaps. i’d like to think of it as a wake-up call. my own version of raging against the dying of the light.

i know for a fact that i once had passion. that means i have a capacity for it. like riding a horse, i should be able to do it again once i been saddled up for some time. if i have to unlearn my cynicism to break it, at least the wind will be blowing against my face.

so next time, when my life’s Strang asks me and challenges my demons, ‘at least I galloped – when did you?’ – i will answer:

once, and sometime soon - i’ll race you.

remembering the tinman, epilogue and in defense of the accused

eleven years ago - johannesburg, by the lake westdene

yesterday morning i had the most perfect day.

it's one of those sunny and cool african autumn morning . it was quiet except for the sound of the wind kissing the leaves of the trees and the birds carrying on a symphony not unlike the jazz band in mellvile the night before. i was lying on the grass in the garden. a pussywillow (or is it poppies? cattails? he called them "fairies" to my endless amusement) landed on my cheek.



i'm stoned. smoking my ciggie. a cup of warm lemon tea next to me. i'm still feeling a little tingly from the good sex last night. and i watch my man reading le carre's the constant gardener next to me. smiling, chuckling quietly to himself and wiggling his toes on the grass. he looked away from his book intermittently as if to check i was OK and not floating away like the faeries. he asked me if i was content. i just smiled.

i was happy. it can't get better than that.

but as i am writing this, M is in a plane on his way back to the uk. he arrived jo'burg last thursday and he stayed with me for the weekend. against my better judgment i brought him to the airport. managed not to cry in the airport. but bawled shamelessly in the car on the 45 minute drive back to town.

i'm hurting.

i dont regret it though. knowing how terrified i am of the airport goodbye's we decided to talk before we left the garden. i told him 4 things:

1. i thanked him. told him he came in a very trying time in my life. and what he gave was probably exactly what i needed the most.

2. i lied. the night he arrived i promised him i will stop loving him from that point forward. (this is because he insists i shouldn't. he said he didn't want to cause me pain.) but i admitted i will continue love him for some time. and he shouldn't be afraid. it comes with no demands.

3.that it's ok that he doesn't love me. when i think about how he treated me and how generous he was of his affection. (i.e. when he arrived in jo'burg the first thing he said was "you realize i'm here because of you", kissing me in a mall to thank me for a going away CD gift, holding my hand whenever we are on our way home each night this weekend and holding me tight, looking to my eyes with his as moist as mine and kissing me at the airport, etc.), i think its a very good standard for a person who is not in love with me. i told him even for a person who will say he loves me - how he treated me was not a bad barometer at all. it's just that we had too little time.

4. that i hope we can be friends too. that i hope we will find a way to keep in touch and inform each other about the major developments in our lives. because i'll always wish him well.

he was silent for a while. and quietly he said he was amazed at how grown up i am at handling this. he told me 3 things:

1. that our "relationship" did him good. before us he was inclined to say that the last 2 months he had in africa was shit (he wanted to stay till the end of the year but his college booted him out primarily because he's too white). but that's not accurate anymore. he said he's a better person because of us.

2. that he will miss me but he hopes that i don't. (when i asked why, he said again he doesn't want me to be hurt)

3. that if i come to the uk and he's there we should hook up and he'll introduce me to his parents.

so you see i feel there's nothing left unsaid between us. but it still doesn't stop this mammoth weight in my chest from pressing down. so i wrote him today to say i'll have to stop writing to him for a while till i get to the point when i won't be so hurt by losing him so soon.

you may think i'm optimistic about thinking we will keep in touch. the fact is i realize people lose their way all the time. in the airport the only thing i said to him is just in case we don't make good of the "let's keep in touch" thing - he should have a good life. and he should remember that i will always wish him all the best life has to offer because i think he deserves it.

so don't worry about me. he was a good man. and even if sometimes he doesn't think so, he's a good person to love. i think about the rather unfortunate situation we found ourselves in and the countless times when it's so much easier just to be nasty to each other. i'm amazed that we stayed kind and treated each other with a great deal of respect and affection. although this is probably the first time i'm not the one who's doing the "leaving" in a relationship, i think i too am a better person because of him.

as i was waiting for the bus this morning, what he called "fairies" were flying all over the road. thought it was strange but it gave me a great deal of comfort.

wilted flowers

today i chucked the flowers i received for my birthday in the garbage can.



it’s been more than a week since my birthday. a week since the party that was thrown by my partner and friends, to celebrate my life. or the beginning of it, should we believe the tired adage.

everyday, since that day (after recovering from the hangover that tails every good party, that is), i open my blogspot account and attempt to write a post, something to mark my official entry to the rank of middle ages. i review my earlier posts to the point that i re-read everything i’ve written since i started this blog. i consider regurgitating earlier posts but felt like a phony and stopped myself in time from committing self-plagiarism.

i combed through the recent and not so recent posts of my favourite writers in my blogroll. like always, their words bring inspiration, smiles and vicarious heartbreak, and yet they failed getting my fingers active on the keyboard to appropriately punctuate this (subjectively) momentous occasion.

lyka asks in his recent post, ‘are you happy?’

i realised that i heard this question posed to me more often in the last few days than i can ever remember. definitely more times than i can come up with answers that resonates the truth rather than those resembling the lines beauty pageant contestants spew out to impress judges ready to make a mark on their scoreboards. somehow i felt like i would let people down and get a failing mark if i give the ambiguous truth and thereby respond with less bravado than expected.

the thing is, this age thing, it doesn’t make you more wise or witty or profound. it definitely does not make you happier. truth be told, it doesn’t make you sadder, either. it just makes you, well, older.

it is rather disconcerting to realise that this new leaf that i turned did not come with an earth-shaking epiphany, not even a startlingly fresh insight. it did not come with a wave of joy nor a surge of sadness.

it just came to pass.

as i wash the vase that reeked something terrible, i was hit by panic that maybe there was a card enclosed with the flowers that i missed and unwittingly chucked in the bin.

i took out the bin from the cubbyhole below the sink. like a bag lady, i opened the garbage can and looked for what i discarded.

i examined the flowers. while wilted, they still looked hopeful and uncrushed by the move from vase to bin. i started to think of all the affection, well wishes and good intentions that so many people extended in the last few days. i realised they were far more than the questions that wait for answers that dread the imminent scorecard. the wilted flowers' tenacity trumped my cynicism.

there was a message there – but it wasn’t in a card.

i put the bin back and dried the vase, mentally embracing the people that signifies everything that is good in my life.

lyka, i may be fucked up. but for now, i am thankful.

new loon

‘because it doesn't make sense for you to love me. i'm nothing... human. nothing’

so goes another hollywood movie line to shake the very core of our beliefs.

jp and i watched new moon because everybody else did (so much for personal integrity). the prospect of buff half-naked boys prancing around the jungle, acting like drooling dogs, made succumbing to pop-culture peer pressure a little easier.
truth be told, it wasn’t half bad.

i’ve always had low expectations for books having movie tie-ins. it’s just usually just a tad better than their gaming counterparts.

but i digress.

i came home after the movie with an inexplicable urge to sort that line out in my mind.

make sense. what makes sense? 1+1 = 2. that makes sense, and then very little else do.

even more so when it comes to love. true, some studies linking love to a feeling of elation produced by a combination of hormones released by specific parts of the brain to ensure progeny makes sense. but to reduce all that drama to something hormonal is too lose all the romantic and spiritual significance we assign to it. so i was thinking, do we want love to make sense, anyway?

personally, i don't think love can make sense even if i want it to. however, i believe i have to make sense even if my feelings don't.

and going back to the movie: for instance - this thing about edward and jacob. sure, i am not averse to the odd threeway when it is called for. but to expect it to happen with a werewolf and a vampire? what was she thinking?

oh right, even vampires cannot read her mind. (could it be because there's nothing there?)

as the consistently divine dakota fanning playing jane said, 'this may hurt just a little.'

it might be just the green envious me talking, so

bite me.

memory like elephants

all of my memories of elephants are happy:

like the elephant that swings from side to side that one day me and my brothers bullied my father to take us to manila zoo;

or the elephant that chased our little hired car once on a road trip and we got hopelessly lost in a wildlife reserve in limpopo province;

or the elephant that scared my mother when i took her to a night safari in kruger's park;

and very recently the hundred elephants parade that my friend id and i followed all throughout amsterdam because we were hopeless tourists.

they say 'an elephant never forgets'. in fact, some studies show the verity of this claim. specifically, the ability of the matriarch in an elephant herd to 'remember' and recognise danger, migration route and source of food is crucial it the herd's survival.


lately, my brothers and i are noticing that my mother is losing her memory. it started with her repeating herself. then she started to forget where she places things. now she is starting to forget details of events.

my mother's loss of memory fill me with a deep sense of sadness. i guess my mother has always been the bastion of strength in the family. to the extent that she is the one true person you can always rely on. now, i have to contend with the fact that that strength is affected by age. of her being in the sunset of her life. and in contending with my mothers' mortality, i have to contend with my own.

some people tell me, 'you have a memory like an elephant.'

maybe because things are fleeting that i hold on to the memories of people, things and event that are dear.

and i never want to forget my elephants.

a dream in april

i once had a relationship with a writer. while the passion was mediocre, we wrote well together. here's an english translation of a filipino renga we wrote while we were still figuring out what we were to each other. thought i'd share it before april ends...


the rain is just in our imagination
in dreams, you embrace the sun
until we both wake up drenched in sweat
consumed by unbearable heat and thirst

many summer have passed with this curse
cheated by time
mocked by consciousness
in the burning asphalt of midday

will i have nightmares
of melancholic sunsets
if i betray
the traitorous seasons?

still, i will close my eyes
and lay in the clouds
of famine in harvest time

because even if we missed the rain
even if we did not dance
under the first shower in april
we will fly to the skies
and not wait to be awaken again

Losing Rings

what are the things that bind us? it’s a question that all of us have asked ourselves at some point in our lives. at the beginning of this year 3 friends, [G], id and kiel decided to connect their blogs, in a way that a blogroll cannot. they decided to write about something around this very theme and let another introduce the post from a sympathetic perspective. to make things challenging, the question must be answered around a specific piece of jewellery: the ring. this is mine. for the full picture, take time to read [G] and id’s.

Introduction by [G].

If his dick was detachable, he must have lost it several times. Not that he doesn’t value that part of him; he was just simply not an ideal keeper of valuable things. Material things, that is.

Good thing it was just a ring that he misplaced several times. But then again, they were not just simple jewelleries consisting of circlets of precious metal. They were rings that were given by his life partner as a sign of being inside the same circle that binds them as a couple.

Not that he doesn’t value whatever those rings signify. He does, believe me. He was not just a keeper of materials things. But he does value the quintessence of the ring more than anything in his life.



ever since i can remember, i was good at losing things.

on different occasions, i have lost my passport, a number of IDs, mobile phones, monies, my dog and a car (alright, this one was stolen, but it was lost to me no less). heck, i even lost my way a number of times.

i always tell myself, this does not make me a bad person. i just don’t need to hold on to something as much as the next guy. when i lost my way, i somehow find another path to get me where i should go. in the face of loss, self-preservation kicks in, i let go.

when i say i was good at losing things. i actually meant i was good about losing things.

it’s one of those quirky things my family and friends love and hate about me.

but then i also lost 4 rings jp gave me as a sign of our love and commitment.

again that doesn’t make me a bad person, per se. just a lousy boyfriend.

last year i lost the giver of the rings twice. just when i thought i lost him for good, jp came back to me with another ring. this time it’s a chunky silver number with elephant hair weaved across, put in place by transparent resin. (did you know that animal behaviour studies show that an elephant never forgets?)


when he gave it to me, my terror at the prospect of another possible loss must have been apparent because he gave me this look. to me it was a look that said, ‘it’s OK, i know you get the message even if you lose it.’ i think it was a look that can otherwise be described as, well, love.

here’s the inevitable question:

will i be a good boyfriend this time and manage to keep this ring? or lose it like the 4 others before it and stay true to my nature of being good at losing things?

i can run rings around the question. but let’s face it. despite my most resolute attempts to keep it, chances are i’ll probably lose it again.

but this ring: it’s more than a piece of jewellery. it’s more than micro-handcuffs disguised as ornament detaining me to a relationship. it’s more than metal and animal parts and resin. i may lose the ring, but i will never lose what it stands for. nor forget the look on his face when he gave it to me.

for the first time, i think i need to hold on to this. if i can be true to myself, i just may learn to be good at losing being good at losing.

after sunset

a new day brings distraction but i miss him most when night falls.

with the setting of the sun, sadness creeps and comes unbidden. i don’t notice it until i feel a dull pain in my chest, followed by a profound sense of hollowness. it feels as if along with his goodbye came the disappearance of my insides. not the physical part of me. just the part that makes me human.

i do not profess to be a sentimental person. i don’t cry at sad movies. i barely remember birthdays. i don’t even remember the exact day we met. or fell in love. or moved in. i remember i lost the ring he gave me to wear as a sign of our commitment. he gave me another. i remember i lost a total of four rings. the last one he tried to find for days before finally giving up.

tonight in the dark, i remember exactly how he smells. how his eyes light up when i walk into the room. how happy he looked when we danced close to each other. how proud he feels of every decision i make in my life, even when i stand in shaky ground. i remember every single thing he has done for me that can be considered kind, loving or tender. i remember how often all of these happened in the last six years. i realise how little i have appreciated those moments and often thought it didn’t happen often enough.

i know how hopelessly flawed he was. my unforgiving eyes must have shown it. i know my sharp tongue has wounded him too many times. now, i remember how the pain is reflected in his physical reaction when i say something hurtful. how his hands shake in every fight. how he cried when he said he wanted to be a better person for me.

in daylight i can convince myself that i ran out of memories that bind me to him. until night falls and one more memory emerges from the darkness and jolt me back to the feeling, i felt the first time he said goodbye.

i want him to come back. but most of all, i want him to know that all those things did not go unnoticed.

i remember.

postscript

tonight he sent me a poem, i'll share with you how it ends:

you love me
you are my peace
what my heart longs for


tonight, i am not afraid of the memories, i welcome darkness again like a lost friend.

he's leaving - lamentations of years ago

he's leaving.

such a funny thing to say. makes you think he's here now and is just about to walk away. but he's never been here. except for the brief blissful meetings in other places, the all too few days we were together. and even then without complete disregard to the imminent parting.

the bustling city can't drown out the deafening, lonely ringing in my ear. i watch the sun set over johannesburg's skyscrapers framed by my office window. it echoes the sinking feeling in my chest. the imposing mammoth structures of concrete, glass and metal seem to close in on me. hard and cold, mocking my impudence to dare wish to transcend limits.

i should be working but i find myself clicking the web browser all the time. checking for his e-mail. unreasonably disappointed knowing since his job is finished he doesn't have internet access. but i hope anyway that he needs to tell me things that can't wait another day. and that he'll just have to find a way. it's pathetic how i expect his longing to match mine.

he made it clear that he's leaving and i can't do anything about it. this was a given even before we met each other, so how could i? even if i wanted to. and i'm not sure i do.

he's leaving and i know now why it hurts. at first i thought it was his issues about his sexuality that makes him act strange. i know these issues have not been resolved. still, i know that this is not the reason why he stopped short of letting me get under his skin.

he does not love me. he said so himself. he told me that if he loved me he doesn't see any problem of pursuing a long term relationship. i asked him why. he said he never saw a future for us at the onset.

that's why he doesn't love me? why should prospects of the future affect the way he feels? he kept his head screwed tightly on top of his shoulders, i guess. all i know is that i failed to make him love me. and i ask myself what is it in my blood that makes love such an insanity.

he doesn't love me and that hurts more than the fact that he's leaving.

he doesn't love me and against reason i believe that's the reason why he's leaving.

he'll see me one last time before he leaves. and i wonder why i feel such restless anticipation about something that will inevitably end to more pain.

he'll be here. finally. once before he leaves.

still i know he'll always keep his distance.