Thursday, January 31, 2008

Tales With Missing Heading

Long overdue, I know, but I finally gotten around into tweaking an old abandoned stuff and will now honor the promise made to Joy-Joy that my next pinoy verse will be dedicated to her.

walang pamagat
(para kay Joy-Joy)

naaaninag kita kahapon
nagkukubli sa lagaslas ng araw
ang payak mo'ng katawan
nagiging palikuran
ng isandaang mga butil ng pawis
umigib ang mga diwata ng pagdadalamhati
sa mga bukal na umusbong
sa iyong pagal na mga bisig

katanghalian ngayon
ikaw ay muling mangungulimbat
sa malawak na gubat
ng pakikipagsapalaran
sasagwan sa mga dalampasigan
at muling bibilang
ng mga sandaling pipilasin
sa mga tangkay
ng bawat buntonghiningang aagos

muli mo'ng maninilayan
ang kahubdan at mga kapansanan
na umaawit sa bawat dagundong
ng iyong magigiting na mga yapak

sunog ang iyong mga balat
humihimlay sa mga anino
ng mga mahinahong alon
ng bugso-bugsong mga
kalungkutan

ang iyong kamalayan
ay masuyong pinupukaw
at idinuduyan ng mga pangarap
iwinawaksi mula sa mga kandungan
ng lumbay

maaring bukas
ang mga ito ay sasaliwaliin
ng mga unos, ng mga walang
humpay na pagkabigo

subalit ngayon
ito ay hindi mo alintana
ang iyong mga titig
nagtatampisaw sa mga ulap
tinatangay
ng mapaglarong
kawalan


24.04.2005/31.01.2008

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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Ceasefire

Opposed to my persistent nature I know when to call a truce. You do well in making me realize that your affection is already bespoken to someone else. That despite my best efforts your sweet regards and girly crushes are not mine to own. Let me assure you in sincerity: I will not stand in the way. Caring for someone is a one way path and the best I can hope for is for that fondness to be returned and not to be imposed back. Let us spare each other of clumsy feel-good apologies and from hereon walk the easy corridors of uncomplicated familiar friendship. Meanwhile let me take care of this little bruise. With warm wishes, Loudcloud.

~ ~ ~

Work has demolished my healthy online life. I barely have time to respond to emails more so write them. My blog comment response time is beyond delayed, it’s laughably retarded. I miss the cyberbanters, the bloghopping and leaving insane comments. I hope, like most Hollywood-inspired romance, this busy business is temporary.

~~~

Offline YM message from HeWhoIsNotToBeNamed: Talk about permanence... you were waxing romantic on jan 22 and 2 days after were suddenly looking for a d-i-y kit for handgliders haha

Yes, because I can't sit still ten minutes in a row without getting buttsores ;-P


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Saturday, January 26, 2008

An Explosion Of A Million Clichés*

Can you quantify love? Is there a proper yardstick to gauge its intensity? Can you impose on someone to love you back in the same breath and measure?

I just can’t help but ask because today, a lingering warmth from long ago followed me around hallways, climbed my desk and soaked my monitor like unwanted storms that bleed of maudlin dialogues from trashy paperbacks. They taunt me with imagined scenes, promised joys and infinite probabilities.

I don’t resent your intrusion, neither do i begrudge your disturbance of the easy solitude that has been my uncomplicated friend; you are a welcome distraction. You are not much different from a kind of fondness that declines explanations, definitions or justifications. You are a digression from my professional world along with its manic pace and idiosyncrasies. Your laughter makes me long for something—some unpredicted tenderness or perhaps an overdue rekindling with the warmth and glow of waking up next to another dreaming body that's lost in the slow raptures of deep sleep.

That feeling—it seemed like a vaguely-distant memory, nearly forgotten.

Thank you for coming along; for patiently leading me back into semi-forgotten sensations that I seem to have lost for sometime now. Thank you for reminding me: for that sudden flash of recognition when you cut through and saw past my detachments and wrapped my misgivings, flaws and apathy with the slow smoulders of your steady gaze.
Thank you for gently making me recall the breed of elation that makes me feel like explosions of butterflies or an awkward verse riddled with a million clichés. Thank you for the tolerant times when you made me see the gaps and differences between reason and abandon. It’s startling; it's remarkable. I am instantly wide-eyed - ready to reclaim a long-displaced possession.

We bartered fears. Looked at each other from sheltered distances, calculating the risks of involvement, making furtive lists in our minds on why we shouldn’t fall into each other’s clutches. We tried to save each other from ourselves, yet we recognize the fire in each other's faces.

We traded hopes, ideals, dreams and at times, we floated with hilarious delusions. And, in doing so, opened ourselves into omnipresent possibilities of disappointments and afflictions. Aren’t we self-loathing that way?

We lingered for a while, like dreamers off to nowhere but the mellowness of the moment. You, ever burning; me, ever intangible. It’s somewhat strange: the way we manage to find a comfortable space between breathing and wishful thinking—a moment where everything dissolves.

Are we to be blamed? Are there excuses we haven’t exhausted yet?

Sometime ago, I have read somewhere that in order to master life and love you must know when to hold fast and when to let go. We don’t need this insight to coach us. We have been battered, shattered, hurt. Consciously or unwittingly we inflict the same things on other people, who, like us, are also chasing possibilities at happiness.

Our very existence are testaments of treading through life complete with all the raptures and the ills we harvested along the way. “There is no right or wrong way to fall in love,” I used to quote an uncelebrated philosopher. “You just feel it.” In thinking so lies the danger—the danger of us abandoning our respective selves in forked bends and crossroads in pursuit of that desirable fire.

I have tried retreating my steps in safe distances where even the blurred memory of your face wouldn’t linger. But your absence made everything clear: it is as if those empty spaces are the very playground of your hearty giggles to haunt me..

Have I mentioned the difficulty of finding the right substitutes for those three tired words to articulate how much I long for you to be the very definition of closure in my wanderings? How a familiar smile racing across the bows of your lips to be the very meaning of permanence in my life?

Have I said yet that you are luminous and vulnerable?

That you are beautiful?

That you are precious?



(* recycled and updated entry from an old blog)

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

It's A Jelly Hellishday With Mary

Idiots make me want to hang-glide to Korea, hijack a nuclear facility and detonate their bathrooms with thorium blasts. Retards make me want to channel Jack The Ripper and learn crochet using their intestines. As you can glean from the preceding affectionate declaratives I've had a spectacular time at work. Judging from the heated debates the next few days won't come near around the hundred mile radius of a Mary Poppins scene. Anyone knows how to assemble a home-made hang glide?

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Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Love In The Time Of Blogorrhea

Ancient are the days when flowers and the burning tales of their provenance are preserved by wedging their petals between weights of voluminous books. Our befuddled generation is often dazzled by parental tales of long-drawn-out courtships, their rigorous pursuits and impassioned rituals. Then was the olden sleepy age where emotional bonds don't go obsolete at the blink of an eyelash.

Fast track into the age of Blogorrhea where affairs get outdated faster than last season’s prom dress; hyper reality and virtual life supersedes the ability to foster meaningful relationships outside the confines of cyberspace. Behold, a generation of lonely disposables!

If one chooses to walk the easy delusions of romance, then he condemns himself into the kind of doom that is not only laughable - He willingly impales himself in the kind of tragic isolation that can only be found in characters of Armistead Mauphin novels.

People express amusement over those who hold on to even the slightest manifestations of love—those who persist in the notion of old school romanticism. Such frailty is sneered upon. Mockery is riddled like arrows on fools who keep candy wrappers—junk remains of presents from departed lovers. We ridicule those who preserve bus tickets in commemoration of that first bout with togetherness.

Are we being resentful, are we bitter that others are having it good? And the only way to conceal our hidden ache for even the most petty symptoms of genuine fondness is through behaving with cynical airs. Of perpetuating the pretense of someone who can’t be bothered by trivialities of a so-called smoldering devotion?

The urge to ridicule is easy. To an outsider that roll of brittle bus ticket holds neither value nor meaning, mere rubbish that serves no purpose but to be swept with the rest of life’s impertinent discardables. However to the one who invested a memory of sublime affection in correlation to that insignificant ticket, disposing of such a possession is a mindless act that will provoke unspeakable anguish. Remembrance is the past time of those who voluntarily wish to suffer.

Think of movie theater tickets, a string of pearls, a strand of hair imprisoned in heirloom lockets, or just the lingering dampness of rousing to the softness of a sweet kiss—they are of no value to anyone. But to the one who carry the remembrance of that one shared moment, it is an enduring keepsake of a capacity to nurse that peculiar warmth that no amount of bruises and aches can diminish.

Confronted by the ruthless swirl of a mad cyberworld, our unspoken hope is to take a vacation from fleeting flickers and free-fall into the scarce flash of permanence.

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Monday, January 21, 2008

Yeah, Like, Do We Really Need Another Logo?!

Meddling isn’t really my favorite pastime but I hope this will come off as a simple contribution to Talksmart’s continuing efforts to be the convenient clearing of Filipino bloggers. In between hellish demands at work I tried to create the following award identities for Filipino Blogger Of The Week. Ok, I am aware that there are critical snots out there and I’d like to establish the fact that these are not polished pieces and all howls of disapproval will be summarily ignored. Haha. Those hieroglyphics-like scribblings are Alibata (the old Filipino alphabet used by our ancestors) that reads Timpalak Ng Pilipino Blag. The rest are pretty self-explanatory I hope. (The logo variants after the jump.)


P.S. Talksmart, I’ll email you regarding the other blog challenge project. I was too exhausted during the weekend to pop you a note. Will do when things clear at work.

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Anne Frank's Dustpan

Trivialities are basically the main ingredient of online chats but at some point during my aimless banter with Xienah I was reminded of two of the most horrific concepts that plagued my high school life. No, it’s not zits, hormones going amok, having to fill out thousands of silly slam books, acid washed jeans, or inhaling carcinogens wafting the hallways from mindless abuse of hairspray by female students whose teased bangs can serve as shields against nuclear warheads attacks. The two sickening things I mean are the ones I cannot bring up without hugging myself and rocking like a ball in some corner while humming Always Look At The Bright Side Of Your Life. That, or letting my dormant Serial Killer to surface.

01. Cleaners.
02. Formal Theme.

These two concepts have instantly claimed their rightful spot as dirtiest words in my vocabulary.

I don’t know about you but I attended a school where every classroom has bright yellow cartolina paper with letterings espousing “Honesty Is The Best Policy,” “Don’t Do Unto Others What You Don’t Want Others To Do Unto You,” “Cleanliness Is NEXT to Godliness.”

Hahahahahahahaha!

I suspected our homeroom teachers, whoever designed those insane wall-tacked reminders and the school principal shared the same crack dealer.

In the interest of those who are spared of these ghastly activities let me explain. The concept of Cleaners is this: the number of students in every class or section is equally divided by five to correspond to each day of school week. Then you are assigned a respective day to be the designated homeroom Cleaners. As in unpaid janitors for that specific day. Early on, we students grasped the concept of exploitation and imposed child labor before it became a trendy touchy topic in modern social issues. And here’s the clincher: if you fail to clean the room with your co-cleaners, they will list your name in a log sheet wherein you risk two things. One, the penalty of one peso per failure to clean and two, sliding off the class adviser’s goodwill which maybe linked to you having lousy grades.

This sordid affair naturally made my rebellious streaks wide-eyed. I not only rebuffed this odd imposition but I mocked the airheads who follow these rules like narcotized ducks. I slap their foreheads with a sticker that proudly announces their meek obedience: Uto-Uto.

Up to this day I haven’t chanced on a single headline of DSWD representatives raiding schools that impose Cleaners Racket and shoving into jails the abusive schoolmasters. I suspect the DSWD people share the same crack dealer with principals and have equity shares on the collected penalties. Come to think of it: there are gazillion pupils and students doing cleaners in schools everyday and in a single day the collection of penalties will be sufficient to meet the minimum to open a private banking account in offshore branches of Credit Suisse.

I hate this cleaners shit like I hated the cheesa fruit. I defied authorities and ignored the ire of my fellow classmates whenever I refuse to touch a broom, a dustpan or a window wiper. Come on! Is this supposed to promote industriousness among students and educate them on the value of cleanliness or a glaring evidence of the school's inept janitorial services? If the ones who are paid to clean the rooms are getting paid for not doing their jobs then how come none of them had the decency to offer payroll participation?

As a result I am labeled difficult, lazy, uncooperative, insubordinate, yadda yadda. Yes, at a tender age I am my teachers’ and dumb classmates’ delinquent manifestation of what a visible headache looks like.

“Why are you refusing to clean/pay the penalty for failing to clean the room?” I would be interrogated.

“Why are you being a member of the Gestapo?” I am tempted to answer, instead defiantly blurts “I don’t see any connection in scrubbing the floor and getting a perfect score in Trigonometry.”

“You are very stubborn. I am not pleased by your unbecoming behavior Loudcloud.”

“Stubborn, yes ma’am, but not stupid.”

“I want to talk to your mother.”

“I’m not sure my mother would want to talk to you.”

The vein in her forehead becomes prominent as it throbs to the same thump as the bass lines in Nirvana’s Lithium. I suspect that to rid of her daily migraine she recommended me for acceleration. I have funny mental images of her sometimes jolting upwards from sleep, beads of sweat spurting from her hot pores when my impish grin creeps in her dreams. Methinks her tics and memories of me are still being kept in check by medications.

Formal themes. Now this is where I was educated on the concept of subjectivity, lousy tastes and injustice.

As we all know we have had composition papers officially called Formal Themes. We buy Formal Theme Books to write on our monumental opuses as partial requirement for completing the subject. Encouraged with a teacher's misguided beliefs that somewhere in our zit-riddled heads a Tolstoy or a Capote just waits for an opportunity to wake up, we wrote away like laboratory mice on Prozac overdose. This is hilarious because we habitually turn in grammatically-fractured, cliché-infested, incoherent drivels and the most blood-curdling sentimental naïveté that, when showed to us as adults, will drive us to Psychiatric attention en masse.

But nobody had the presence of mind to challenge the most idiotic topics in which we are made to write about. “What did you do during school vacation?” “Describe Your Pet.” “What do you want to be when you get to College?”

Here’s where I fume. No matter how well-thought out or original or at least, different my compositions are I get a measly 85% percent while the most dorky, mundane, stupor-inducing writings of the cheerful assholes who suck up to the teacher that will embarrass a brand new Dyson gets a sterling 100%. I have learned to distrust the hackneyed tastes of authorities. What can I say; I learned jadedness in English 101.

So I hit back by challenging the dreadful mediocrity of classmates and instructors by being a wiseass for my own warped amusement.

“What did you do during school vacation?” "I discovered the joys of masturbation and has been wanking off till three in the morning. It was personally satisfying." My rating? A bold all-caps red Panda Ballpen scrawled “See The Principal.” What did they want, I lie? What if that’s what I did during the vacation? Jerks.

“Describe your Pet.” "My Pet is our household's unchallenged comedy star: it curls in the rug all day and shits on the couch, sending my mom into hysterics. Her turd reminds me those beads being drank by Chinese folks. And let me describe the smell…”

“What do you want to be when you get to College?” "I want to be the same person only with bigger allowance and the stamina to screw sorority babes all weekends." I didn't actually write in the sorority bit but the teacher got my gist. The expression on her face must have been priceless.

My formal themes, I was later told, were the source of hysteria in teachers’ room.

And I was too young and ignorant then to demand for royalties so I can pay for my crippling Cleaners penalty dues.




(post script: this post can only be made possible by going home at two a.m. after gargling tequila. i will likely disown this entry when sobered up. or not.)

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Friday, January 18, 2008

Crapped Marks

Harebrained things happen at work all the time but it has its rich moments.


Junior Designer (pointing at the ad's bleed area): Should I crop here?
Wiseass Art Director: No, go to the Comfort Room.


Howls of merriment burst like when someone farts during a quiet Algebra Exam.


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Wednesday, January 16, 2008

The Great Blogjesters Bonanza

Humor is cocaine only legal. Addictive, entertaining, way much cheaper than therapy and in the face of all the madness in the world makes life sufferable. Which brings me to the sole purpose of this drivel: The Laffapalooza Blog Award—a genius spark of Badoodles aka Kwentong Barbero to elevate humor into the ferocity level of both the Olympic Games and the race for The Oval Office. You get the gist.

Before I slap my support badge to my nominated bloggers’ foreheads allow me to thank Coldman who accidentally nominated my blog for this feral blogging bonanza. I have high regard for Coldman and his blog; I digress there everyday. But the whole idea of nominating my warped blog to headbutt with the local blogosphere’s heavy-hitters made me cast clouds of doubts on his sanity. My blog is five light years from being funny. What I pass off as humor infuriates the hell out of people. Coldman, I admire you, but whatever you were smoking I don’t want some! Haha. Seriously, it’s a sweet gesture that should not remain unappreciated. Thank you.

But I encourage you, despite Coldman’s heart-warming confidence in me, NOT to vote for Loud Cloud but for the following more deserving contenders. They live up to the essence of a true humor blog. They are so good they should be illegal. They should come with a three hundred points neon Helvetica
health hazard warning: DON’T READ THESE BLOGS WHILE EATING POLVORON!

01 Chiksilog. – Sassy, deadpan, a blogging kitten who is a genetic splice of Jessica Rabbit, Catwoman, Sarah Silverman and the tranny manicurist in your neighborhood beauty parlor who happen to own Uma Thurman’s samurai in Kill Bill. Choosing to blog in Tagalog makes her humor all the more piquant, with more flavors and textures than Chowking’s Halo Halo Special. Don’t annoy her.

02 Misterhubs – If you want to steer clear of paralyzing lawsuits don’t, under any circumstances, allow this guy to write captions/reviews for fashion, society page royalettes and celebrity sections! Though a live TV talkshow should be in order. This legal urbanite knows no sacred cow: from turds, to chocnuts, from eyeballing hijinks to meaningful relationships, this guy delivers a smart brand of warped humor with more twists than Bob Marley’s dreadlocks. The annoying thing is he gets away with dissecting even the most revolting topic with breezy abandon and still illicit convulsions from random readers.

03 Noisy Noisy Man – One of Life’s Greatest Mysteries is: Why is this blogger not plied from his current job to write movie scripts and TV sitcoms we would rush home to watch? A comic star in his own right he has a legion of rabid fans who devour his madcap tales covering anything and everything under the thick smog blanketing the metropolis. And beyond. Self-deprecating, riotous, his insights are often warped but cuts like a surgeon’s scalpel in areas not intended to be sliced but emerge from it in appreciative howls of laughter.

04 Coldman and 05The Balloon Dream – At risk of being a member of Mutual Masturbation Society, I nominate them because they share an almost common quality: their brand of humor is not only hilariously wacky, but they come across as the guys who are genuinely pleasant to swap snappy slapsticks with. They look at things in slightly off-kilter way which makes everything hilarious and witty. In a parallel universe they are the less neurotic Jimmy Fallon who will make geriatric grandmothers moist in areas where the sun doesn’t shine.

Since the rule has it that I break the tie, I have no choice but remove the following from my nomination list:

Cofibean – The High Lord Cavendish Of Sarcasm. With his coniotic-speak, God’s-Gift-To-Humankind demeanor, Snooty caliber of brutal humor, here is the hardboiled hilarity which is inimitable in its self-possessed nuttiness. He regularly skewers the blogosphere and reap tsunamis of ire from service oriented industry professionals who he fondly refers to as ‘natives’ on a generous day and ‘orcs’ when he misses his valium fix.

Again, vote for the abovementioned people. Ignore my blog. Have the highest honors and accolades to their rightful winners. I’d rather bribe Badoodles with ten tequila shots to rig the cash prize raffle in my favor. A reasonable trade, if you ask me, because like most responsible citizens I am a committed proponent of fairness.

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

That Word. Yes, THAT word.

Dear E. Funny things swim in my head these days, chief among them is the possibility of me growing up, sweeping this languid brooding over things long gone, and maybe, just maybe, finally look at the brighter side and begin contemplating on the possibility of that dreaded four letter word.

I would like to be defenseless again. To subject myself to the spontaneous bursts of naive affection, to slam all the self-defeating switches down and face a germinating fondness head on. There are brief, lazy moments during the day when I catch myself thinking how it is to once more smolder in the unblinking gaze of pure gentleness. That was many moons ago, and I seem to have forgotten the tiny raptures of fingertips gliding the distance of a back of a neck towards the slow-moving rhythms of a thrusting hips, where, for a moment, they hesitate there, before starting to retrace their path and map the expanse of a rising and falling spine.

I miss midnight’s tender geometries: hands wrapped around the torso, concise kisses dotting pectorals and busts, legs anchored around waist, or two bodies recreating the concaves of soup bowls stacked sideways in quiet kitchen drawers.

I have almost forgotten how to glance at wall clocks impatiently, in blazing anticipation of after-work reunions over crustaceans, pasta, bubbly chuckles, bartering unhurried retelling of even the most mundane non-events of the day.

I want to be reminded that I am capable of spoiling someone to bits. To agonize over morning departures as I glance back in bed and there is loveliness purring softly, lost in the infinity of dreams and downy sleep.

I am aware that just by flirting with this silly notion, I am sealing my doom; that I will be treading a treacherous path, and even my greatest hopefulness will be prey to devastation and unspeakable grief.

I exhale, contemplating the sweet rewards of the L word, finding the courage to outpace gnawing hesitations and let my soaring expectations unravel with the January breeze.

Yours, Loudcloud, slightly intoxicated with possibilities, wide eyed, half-smiling.



* (LOVE, painting by Robert Indiana, 1973)

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

¡Feliz Cumpleaño, Señor Quixote!

Quick! Let's hunt Ian down and demand for bottomless Strong Ice Beer at Ponti! Or at least, a slice of Joni's Bakeshop mocha cake and a cone of dirty ice cream! Haha. Cheers, mi amigo!

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Friday, January 11, 2008

IT

Weather forecasts do not make me straighten up and take heed. Two reasons. One, forecasts are often laughably inaccurate, and, most times, indirectly proportional. Two, if a forecast indeed happens, then it serves no purpose but ruin plans and moods. So when it was fore casted somewhere in the great universal blackhole that it's going to be pouring not just rain but anvils and radioactive porcupines on my thoughtless head I scoffed at it while gargling caffeine and trading clever retorts with virtual people over Yahoo Messenger. This irresponsible disregard of stormy portents comes with a very steep, atrocious price.


The workplace became a suit and tie version of Chernobyl. Conflicts exploded like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Tempers flew like Frisbees randomly tossed by Beelzebub. Projects got filed in The Great Limbo folder and all the brilliant folks in my side of the battlefield are seething over the incompetence of White Elephants whose only traction to still having the job is either seniority or hiding in the affection and trusting generosity of The Power That Be. Those Fucktards. Those Holocaust-bait Fucking Retards.



One of these Fucktards is an idiot who shall remain nameless because if we assign an alias/name it will assume an identity of a bonafide living thing. As Cosmic Rule of Equality would have it, no matter how inutile single-celled genetic waste a thing is, as long as it has a life, it will claim the democratic right to exist. In this light, instead of the risk of giving a name and due to technicalities, the right to exist 'It' would be appropriate.


It slammed the “Launch The Missile Warhead” button in me a couple of days ago. I shall remain vague here because my intrepid assistant might be reading this and could not resist the malicious glee derived from me smashing It's nonexistent self-esteem and provide my wicked colleagues the link.


Let me tell you something about myself: I am generally easygoing, mild-mannered, and—believe it or not—a stalwart believer in the strange and hypothetical concept called coexistence. Unless provoked. Then I get combative and wouldn't hesitate bitch-slapping touchy-feely, fragile spoiled egos a hundred ways till Good Friday.


It's dumb mistake is not having common sense (a natural consequence of having not more than a fraction of a brain cell) to choose his adversaries well. He poked the peaceful hornet's hive without any forethought that the liege of such hive can get ballistic on his ass. That ballistic liege happened to be me.


Yet a very odd thing happened. The Power That Be approached defensively my well-reasoned and justifiably litigious demand for the fucktard's ribs to be served on platinum platter. I maybe not Carl Sagan but I know my bulb isn't dim. It didn't take a split second for me to realize that the infallible Power That Be is treating the unicellular It with kid gloves.


This makes me all the more furious. I am not naïve. I do believe that despite popular claims there is no justice in the universe. But here's another of my flaws: I am a part-time delusional Spartan. I will not allow a bratty impotent zithead to stand victorious, wielding the shield of gloating incompetence.


As my general habit towards good friends, colleagues and superiors (or anyone including strangers for that matter) I do not pull my punches. My words do not pass through proper condensation and spurt out directly from my warped brain like the Niagara siphoned through a faucet with broken stopper knob. Screw political correctness. PC is for wimps. PC is for polite people. PC is denial/lying/indecision/fear given a pastel coating. To hell with pastels—give me Pantone 185C any day of the week.


Naturally not having a PC filter is a casual passport to alienating people. I do not mind. I'd rather read Proust's Remembrance Of Things Past in solitary confinement than endure Stepford Wives well-manicured proceedings which guarantee the swift erosion of self respect and unavoidable brain atrophy when surrounded by inept cowards.


Which explains why it can be such a lonely spot where I am sometimes.

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Wednesday, January 9, 2008

A Hammock In Greece

Dear E,

Three twenty four in the morning I am widely alert, simmering in annoyance and anger. For an insomniac let me tell you of a few things that don't work: lukewarm milk, chill out music, channel surfing, counting sheep, deep breathing, foot scrubs, a hot shower, a primer on Differential Calculus, any movie by Isabelle Adjani, Enya, even masturbation. I feel like smashing things, or bursting into frustrated howls, but can't seem to be bothered.

Times like this I wish you are within reach. You tousling my hair and dismissing my outbursts as immature make my breathing steady. More than I'd care to admit your mere presence, even your unblinking silence dissipate my inner storms.

My pursuits are trivial to an outsider but it feeds my burning need to assert my creative streaks. I know the merciless concrete jungle isn't your favored kettle of ginger ale but it is my chosen battlefield. I thrive in it. It feeds me. It makes me potent and every bruise and brush with frustration confirms my persistence and drive.

But you are elsewhere and moments like this make me realize the gravity of my errors. I'd like to imagine you giving me that cocky i-told-you-so smirk, which, in the countless course from past incidents gave you the license to do so but didn't. It would have been easy for me if you did, because it would be a tangible proof that you have always been right and I was a stubborn fool in pursuing this path. But your rich reserves of gentleness is something beyond my understanding.

You must be dreaming, snugly tucked in the warmth of crisp linens and downy pillows, your breathing even and without care while I write this letter suspended between compunction and frustration. Wistfulness clouds my eyes to imagine wrapping my troubled arms around you and let your calmness let its osmotic power nullify my tempestuous nerves.

But it's all there is: wishful thinking. And missing you beyond words.

Let me end this missive with another wish. That one day I'll find the courage to abandon my quixotic insanities and share a hammock with you somewhere in Greece. Just you, me, the Mediterranean breeze, a pitcher of lemon grass iced tea, that unfinished volume of Neruda sonnets.

And our laughter piercing the calmness of the bluest summer sky.

Yours, Loudcloud, still in the throes of despair and discontent.

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Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Falter. Then Fade

Thinking about the whole ruckus at work today I feel crappy. How is it possible that mediocrity can convey logical arguments? Why does it seem customary for passionate attempts at excellence get drown in the popular views of pedestrianism? Maybe I am just being hard on myself and everyone on the process. Maybe the argument was valid, that I have lofty, unrealistic standards? Topping it all is the unbendable probability that our hard work and steadfast optimism carry no merit and the faith in the project is misplaced. That even our unflinching tenacity can liquefy in the face of bad decisions and indifference. I’m tired. While it’s convenient excuse me as I momentarily slide into jadedness and despair.

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Sunday, January 6, 2008

Stirrings

Dear E. Spring is starting to stir from momentary sleep. I can almost inhale its blurred, fragrant ripples the way I can sense the ghostly tiptoes of melancholy sneaking in. This, unsurprisingly, saddens my heart more than bright summer afternoons. It saddens me more than anything else as a matter of unshakeable habit, because spring is a time when my thoughts swell into full-blown remembrance and every terminating minute seems to lead me to that disappointed promise of us riding horses down the pine-scattered slopes of a northern city.

Forbid me from mumbling yet another apology. I only have myself to fault in the grand scheme of things. Right from the awakening of this germinating fondness you have been ardently steadfast about your claims while I stagger along intangibilities of work and self-defeating prophecies. You have been very patient and such resolve is a rare gem to stumble into in our increasingly-disposable world. Yet nothing can ever thaw out your special spot in my mind. We have downplayed it with humor, even took a crack at alienation. Nevertheless this difficulty cannot be concealed: submerging ourselves in pressing demands of work and distance cannot deny the smoldering thirst of waking up next to your slow, steady breathing on lazy Sunday mornings. I do try, yet my triumphant moments are short-lived.

There are times I catch myself wondering how you are faring. If you’re still chuckling over that private joke, if you’re still wickedly inclined to bring up the wisecracking stab over how I sounded on the phone at the pregnancy of November flu. I ask myself whether you have added another pebble in your jar of mementos, or I play a speculating game whether you have walked barefoot again, reveling in the crackling scherzos of desiccated twigs and moribund leaves. Are you still writing journal notes in the margins of your books in a secret hope that in so doing you will appease the fury of the gods?

Whatever occupies your thoughts presently I certainly hope you will not recall that blender joke. Because I cannot bear imagining you having that memorial nugget leak out of nowhere and make you erupt into hiccups of laughter. Because it will only make you sad afterwards. That breed of sadness, my adored truant, will only make me drink once more in the simmering cup of missing and wanting. Yours, LoudCloud, in equal measures of apology and regret.

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Friday, January 4, 2008

Raise The Finger High, Care Painters


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Wednesday, January 2, 2008

Johnny Walker Puts It Thusly: Keep Walking

Year 2007 expired faster than a prom dress. But what a year it was! I opened this blog, failed the previous attempts at blogging glory, fostered new online friendships and leapfrogged into a new very mind-sharpening job. Forget the stress, the very long hours, the constant bouts with frustration: my mind is always on hyperdrive and that’s the kind of rush I’d go for any time of the year.

Last days of last year were shrouded with heavy clouds of uncertainty. Expectations plummeted like Japanese A6M Zeros during World War II. It was a knee-jerk, sobering wake up call. It shoved things into austere clarity and perspectives skew towards the sour, unsympathetic direction.

And here we are, 2008, with its renewed promise at fresh beginnings. What to do with it? As I am loathe to do ningas-cogon resolutions, I will skip the listing process and save random bloghoppers from unthinkable boredom.

However let it be cast into a slab of industrial grade titanium that I will maintain a stubborn, highly optimistic ground. Well aware that by doing this my naïveté will fall flat on the ground. Who cares. Insanity isn’t beholden to logic. That’s why we fall prey to the illusion of being in love.

It makes you shudder but brave on anyway.

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