Sunday, April 12, 2009

Memento Mori


(In which I was reminded.)


***


Chilling air in a tinted box
Ninety minutes of genuine
And forced harmony. 
Vibratos
Failure falsettos
Lyrics flowing through my veins
Like blood on white from ten years ago.

Numbered thresholds
Locks and keys
And water flowing to an endless abyss
Cotton and fabric
Angled reflections
Counterpointed,
syncopated respirations
and laughter.

Wind blowing
Grungy rhythm
Brand new, senseless,
funny Q&A
False wings
Illicit finger pads
on moss green-covered epidermis
Abrupt stops
And laughter.

Abrupt stops
And laughter.

Abrupt
Stop.

Stop.

Stop.


Mar 26: 2013

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Face Value



(In which a common truth is again proved.)

***

There were two girls talking.

G1: I’ll show you a picture.

G2: Ok. Let me see it. (Looking at the photo.) A group picture, huh? Hmmm… So what about it?

G1: Look at the guy in pink. Yes. The one with the gray jacket and a pink shirt underneath. Yeah, that one! What can you say?

G2: I don’t know.

G1: I knew it. He’s not handsome, eh?
G2: No. Hmm… He’s good looking.

G1: How about the girl next to him? The one with glasses in a lighter pink blouse.

G2: So-so.

G1: They look sweet, don’t they?

G2: (Perhaps not understanding the question.) But the guy looks better.

G1: I mean, I think they are boyfriend/girlfriend. How about you?

G2: I think so. But I still insist that the guy looks better. (Looks away from the photo.) Why are you so interested? And why do you ask me as if my opinion about these two is important? Do you like the guy?

G1: (Seriously) The guy in pink…

G2: Hmm?

G1: …was my ex-boyfriend.

G2: (Startled.) Oh my god! He? The… the one you’ve been telling me about? But…

G1: Yeah…Why?

G2: Nothing. He looks kind. I mean, he doesn’t look like the one you described to me.

G1: I never told you he’s not kind. He was kind to me. I think it’s better to say that he doesn’t look like he could be that harmful, eh?

G2: Oh my god! I’m so sorry.

G1: Maybe that’s why he deleted his e-mail account. He wants to get rid of me completely. He must be ecstatic with his new girl.

G2: (Still feeling guilty for some reasons.) I am really sorry.

OMG!

(In which there is a downpour of weird and shocking things.)
***

I wasn’t able to blog about it but our dog has been sick for more than three weeks now. He refused to eat most of the time and if you’re lucky to make him find the food interesting enough to be eaten, he will just take several spoonfuls and that’s it. He even refuses to eat dog food. We took him to a vet for a checkup but we were not able to afford the laboratory tests. We bought the prescribed medicine for his fever. He used to have nasal and eye secretions. Now he has less eye secretions but he still jerks and refuses to eat. But we’re still thinking of ways to make him well. I called the Philippine Animal Welfare Society to ask if they can help us. The person I talked to said Doggie could have been suffering from Canine Distemper based from the symptoms I told her. Canine Distemper is a highly fatal disease which makes me feel really terrible. No one needs to tell me that I should do something if I still want Doggie alive.


So I entered the class with the telephone conversation still fresh in my thoughts. But I was able to get to teacher’s mood after a while. There was an instance when my student and I were talking about Korean cuisine and I mentioned a former’s student’s comment. She then fell silent and told me after a while, “There was a bad news.”

“What?”

“Your former student went to Australia, right?”

“Yes. He went there last November.”

“His cousin told me he disappeared”

I looked at her, trying to figure out what she just said. I might have looked like a deer in headlights then. Oh no! She isn’t telling about kidnap, is she? So I asked her.

“He was kidnapped? Was anyone asking for money?”

She just looked at me. I instantly understood that I might have used a new word to her so I wrote it down. She looked up for its meaning on her electronic dictionary and exclaimed “Yeah! Kidnap! Oh my god! He was kidnapped!”

And the last time she was told about this was three weeks ago. Poor boy! My last memory of him was when he sent me a gift with a letter in it thanking me for my patience and saying that he owes what he is now to me. (Awwww...)

When our class ends, I went to my room still troubled by the news I was just informed about. When my hands touched the keyboard, my fingers automatically typed the address of a familiar website and I saw something that made my heart go Crack!

OMG! Indeed!