a long goodbye 3

Dear Friend, I fancy meeting you in a very crowded street in an intersection of peoples when the red light turns green and everyone including ourselves rush forward to our own elsewheres. 

The preciseness of things will allow us not to see each other unlike the way one morning on a particular June day I met again at once four people in a corner paces away from ---. 

One I was with about two years in my early twenties with no love lost between us at parting. One met in the late twenties leg of whitewashed paintings. Another through her large scales paintings of cats and flowers. The fourth mere hours from an airport. 

What are the chances we meet again? Together in a spot as if rehearsed sometime somewhere. If at ten dreaming in California someone tells us we will commit suicide at 26 and have PhD at 36 and then be half way around the world bearing a kind of slowness of

Being, that there will be sunshine and sea and we will wonder if this is still life or dream. Why should we not fancy multiverses where in another life some things did not happen and all these merely a child's wondering. A child still must be dreaming elsewhere 

On a bed with starships taped on the ceiling and midmorning flooding in a roomful of books. Or must it be a dog, one of the hundreds of strays in a Catholic country with least love for the least. I fancy hectares of land where dogs run and not only dream. When I move 

From one place to another and meet people and memorise faces in spite myself I fancy meeting them again in another life. One where hurriedly passing the crisscrossing pedestrian lines we are less estranged from ourselves.

And what about at the sacristy

Grandmother, when I was so much younger, brought me
To the sacristy. It was my birthday. A man was there.
He was wearing a gown, wearing a smile, and smelled
Of something else. I was supposed to ask for blessing
Only he was able to give, or so said Grandmother.
This was another lifetime ago, of course, although

I still do remember the door. And the wall. The shape
Of what was dark and deeply engraved on sides of pews.
Grandmother smelling of talc and old lipstick,
The old man with his voice thick as torso.
The noviciate I whispered with one night of songs
Who stepped back into the shadows in fear when told.

The bible has long been unread. The child on afternoons
Reading verses long gone. Still, these days I continue 
To refer what it is: poetry: the word turning flesh.
The old man who was called Father was a stranger.
Grandmother has stories I will never come to know.
I heard a bell outside the sacristy

And with the door I had come into behind me, the man
Turned his back towards a blind corner in the room
And disappeared. There is always another door.

frames of mind

I don't mean the flowers, I say, when I meant how the day was. We were at her little yard, a patch of grass trying to populate in spite lack of water and too much sun; it has a few herbs here and there, spots of turmeric and also what resembles dill. Not too long ago, I helped tend her basil. The jasmine tree, flowering this time of the year, has a series of firefly lights. Twinkling now and making mellow glows, making being in the yard feel it is those years again. Letting some part of the evening seem to wait for the sweet telltale scent of pot.  

She brings a dainty white pot of oolong tea; on her other hand, a book she is about to finish: about a man proving evil in the world. I am cynical about it: evil needs no proving; but keep peace anyway: she most likely is as cynical about poetry.

I think instead it is quite an evening. Remembering the time we had wine and talked--while embers used to grill the fish for dinner slowly turned to ash--about things forgotten now. What did we talk about?

This evening it is about a possible trip to C: the guide says white sand beach, waterfalls, springs. There again the pictures of sunsets, horizons and outrigger boats. In essence they mean leaving. I notice the slice of red watermelon on a plate placed on the table for me and the palm-size local papaya for her. I think about what I might not have for a long time soon. What we try not to talk about.

The slight headache I have had earlier returns. A breeze passes and the bamboo chimes on her doorway make their water sounds. I pet one of the dogs. It is quite an evening. I shove the rest of the papers and things to do in a full drawer in mind.

right across

The ways we go

Two nights ago, I dreamed of pulling a tooth---
two, an incisor and a molar.  There would have been
third, but in the dream it stopped being loose---

and I woke up distraught.  Dreams of teeth

are not good in this country of dreamers, they mean
death.  I spent the rest of the hours watching
for light.  Morning, she tells me, 

death in the family, but it could also mean simply

change

exactly the way I was told the first time
a reader explained the cards before reading.
A transition, she had said, gesturing at a cup.

What do I know?  What do I know?

I called my mother in the dark of morning
she replied, pray.
In the corner I watch the stillness and the quiet

Who knows?  Who knows?

J-- had a stroke of luck right after our meeting, 
and passed away.  A woman with terminal cancer
brought her oxygen tank to listen to a poetry reading.

The Danish neighbour hit the truck at the freeway

the same day my new motorcycle arrived.
His wife and months-old child I had greeted just that morning,
and she had spoken kindly to the dogs.

Who knows?  Who knows?

There is an envelope upstairs waiting for the last paper.
There could be a leaving, but do I dare 
finally go?

the short history of tractors

a funny book.  this book
of humour and history.
also secret-keeping
and family.
how the humble agricultural 
tractor meant to feed thousands

became prototype of a tank
meant to kill countless
in a world war.
and the child who 
wanted to know the family

secret, found what needs to be kept.
and the funny father at last freed
of the burden of memory
raised both hands to heaven,

freed of gripping sanity.

to arrive

The wind chime hangs under blue summer sky.
Its silvery sounds catching breeze.  
Already the middle of May and the strings

still haven't let me go.  I arrive only to leave again.
How the secretary calls.  Something always urgent.

In the meantime, I resist.  Sitting down
and reading poetry from another place.
Elsewhere, someone walks the courthouse steps.

about music and silence

so much has been said about silence, its many ways
of being and through being.  one truth is 

it is difficult now: to find it in between many things.
the world does not leave, no matter

how one keeps away.  something always calls:
a task, a calendar, a message, an urgency.

the book i promised myself to read continues to wait.
the plane arrives.  the plane leaves again.

the music does not stop.
but do we really want it to?

blindness

Because you are sitting at the same seat
at the same corner in the same pocket
of the universe, the angle is the same.
Unless you try to see.
Or ask the breeze, brushing momentarily
at the broad banana leaves, for a lift.
Gina comes over from New York,
bandana, chemotherapy, shaking hands
and all.  She wanted to see the aftermath.
A childhood in an entire city sluiced down.
And talks about a kind of seeing.
Even from an ocean and two breadths away.
Even with an IV, these days she's reading
little known memoirs of wars, what is kept.
Still as political as ever, against an enemy
headless and constant.
Confronted, rewritten, killed, and revived. 
An ongoing battle until one sees the other
dead.  How her hand shakes now,
holding a pen, her sword.  And her insistent
voice grown hoarse.  The indefatigable.
Because unlike fiction characters, you and she 
are real, are weathered now by the constant 
confronting and writing---no matter where 
you sit or what corner in the country-like 
universe you go, the seeing will exact its toll.
But no matter now.
Merlie the poet returns after an exile
to her island home.  You promise her a visit.
And Gina, Gina has taken her flight.

the things we refuse

We are what we choose
and what we refuse
                         -Edith Tiempo




How many times have we talked about
childhood, work, people, the things
we've seen, heard, read.  Their names 
now familiar.  Little snippets repeated overtime
some with more details than truly remembered

or insight.  From the last time
the night was nippy, the stroll easy, or 
the last two bottles taking their time.
I tell you again the stories I do not read

something to do with romance, tall promises 
of love.  Also, family.  Although certainly
there are no escaping these, you laugh,
the world, being, simply these.

how do you divide time

do you read every day? a beginning writer asks by way of conversation.

i try, i say.  not telling him of the three books on the bedside table, the five on the next tabletop, the new one in my bag i am just beginning to read the introduction.

*

how do you write? i once asked a friend, who was a mother, a wife, a lawyer, a writer, a graduate student.
i've forgotten her reply.















 
 

a good book

read illustrated shakespeare at almost the same breath as the comics.  snippets of greek mythology like fairy tales too.  they are among the many in the house of shelves.  many books has since followed long after the bobbsey twins and the hardy boys, and nancy drew who must be pretty but who never seems to grow old (the give away: how many cases could be had in a year?).  including what was once mistaken as must-be porn: the only forbidden books in the house.  these about men and women who arch their backs in throes (what are throes? and throes of passion? and what does this mean: to hold, to tighten, to gasp, to thrust?) 


to read 

is to suddenly have no body, no couch, no bed, no room

only mind, wandering, not lost, in somewhere they call clouds

where there is an old man, a big fish, and the sea.  a boy, a whitewash, a picket fence.  a tale, a revolution, a beheading of nobles, and two cities.  an escaped convict, and a guard.  a white fang.  a mockingbird, a house of the seven gables, a family stranded in an island, a man alone in an island, a story of a man who became buddha, and a man who became the greatest salesman in the world.

since then a longer string of names met while being without body.  names of people with birthdates and graves and histories of the real.

and in between, books of poetry.

to read

is to suddenly have no body, no couch, no bed, no room

only mind, wandering, not lost, in somewhere they call clouds.
 
and what did you get after all this reading? they ask, they who did not know
the art of disappearing.

the little dog sits among the flowers

one day in a series of long weekdays, you get a day-off.
the one day in the week you promise yourself:  i will
sit by the window and write today.  sometimes it happens.
half the time, you are needed to do or to be something else.

you are partly obsessed with trying to keep the same
semblance of order in the house, although
you concede defeat to the dust motes.  your dogs, too,
are patient with you.  and all the books that find themselves

in the unexpected places and wheres in the house: 
all of them  in the middle of being read even though
there are no bookmarks for those who'd want
to pick them up from their innumerable places.

if you visit the bookstore today, the one with a blue door,
and a chime behind the glass, 
you'd come out with a brown paper bag again.
if you decide to stop by a coffee shop, 

all of the pages will be read--if they don't have wifi.
in which case, is near impossible.  unless.
you deliberately leave your phone
and everything else except the moneybills.

and by the glass window at the cafe, 
beside a glass of water and a mug of exoticized coffee,
you watch someone else's little dog
sit among the flowers

this beautiful day at peace.  
and you begin leafing through a page.














 

writing for children

photo taken of a neighbor's wall a few months ago:  bright day at sea with a school of fish, a pink shark, and happy mermaid.

how do we tell our children about the world?

about its being a Neither place.  about the world-at-large only as good as our-world-within can get: the starry heaven above, the moral law within.

pink sharks do not and do exist. 
so do mermaids.  the happy ones.  those who do not  keep on singing about lost loves.

how do we tell our children about the world?
that it is only as beautiful as we will it to be so.

azumi, bodhisattva

Yesterday, I spent nearly an entire day watching two quite-lengthy films adaptations, Azumi (2003) and its sequel, Azumi 2: Death or Love (2005).  Originally, Azumi is a multi-awarded mangga series about the life of a young female assassin in feudal Japan; the films were loose adaptations.  

Should one want to, one can always expound on the concepts and/or ideologies couched in the characters; in some readings, for instance, Azumi herself is thought to be a bodhisattva.  

But what most interest me in these two films is the performativity of gender, especially explicit in the swordfight scenes between Azumi and Bijomaru.  Here is Azumi, dressed not unlike a prince  replete with a blue cape; and Bijomaru, as a delicate lady in white gown, seen most of the time holding and admiring a red rose.
. 

a temple of dragons

The red temple of dragons sits atop the city.  Above the known residences of the elite overlooking the city that sprawls itself like a net for all the working middle; that spreads itself thinner as it goes farther from the Uptown and closer to where the port-less edges.

T, though no longer as militant, and I couldn't help "reading" the landscape while climbing up the red stairways of the red-pillared temple:  how myths were, or have become, religion; how a culture is strong and vulnerable, how art is, how economy is.  No lengthy discussions; only many fragmented ideas.  Some photographs.  We tried de-constructing the temple:  turning it into the highest temple of the folk Sky heavens:  Agyo's; or the dragons, turning real, the last protectors of the temple under siege.  We've had had more conversations on culture and the comic book (as cultural by-product) the past forty-eight hours.  

Inside the temple, a kowtow.  And the scent of incense.

For a moment, at high noon, at the foot of the stairs before leaving, T mentioned a word I took for dusk.  

We went to another temple, a coral-stone church; and then another of the most recent architecture, a hundred white walls like dominoes on top of a land that used to be sea; all in two hours. Then it was time to send off T to the airport, to the parallel universe I once had been.

Along the way, watching from the window the road edge curves and the stiff street light posts, I realized I liked lines.  Literal, visual, two-dimensional lines: the way they are drawn against a backdrop of negative space.  "Espasyo," T said.  

The sky was so clear, it was white and cloudless.  Marching the beginning of summer.


On my way home, the dusk in the city was a gradation of the lightest  yellow, to cyan, to a sober dark blue.  No tinge of red.  A waxing moon was rising, thin and white like a clipped nail.