I took this picture while walking aimlessly in UST. When I saw this empty stone bench I thought, "hey do you feel lonely too?"

New year, sigh. Pretty soon, these memories will be dating from two years back. They are becoming more distant to me as every April passes. I'm a bad girl because I lied. Worse even, because I wish him back. Something that ended too soon will be remembered for quite a while.

22.02.09

He said he disliked the name "Sara"

Because it was his grandmother's name. When he was only nine, she almost (although he claimed it was her intention) had him killed when she shoved him from the top of the stairs and just looked on as he was crashing down. He had not been present at his grandmother's funeral. Not that he wanted to be there. That was just how his grandmother wished it to be, so said his mother.

His mother had been oblivious to this enmity between him and his grandmother. He told me she had even been worse than the gradmother. She dressed him in rags, fed him with canned goods she had collected from welfare institutions, raised him in a house wherein the wall's paint chipped while she earned $80, 000.00 annually as a special education therapist. She even had a teeth implant that cost $7 000.00, while he never recalled the last time he visited a dentist, if he ever did at all.

Nobody told me it would hurt this way. Nobody. Not even the horticulturist.


photo: Internet-sourced

rainy days in June, congested streets on a rainy day, heavy downpour in UST, movie marathon at night, and even certain alert tones on my phone remind me of you.

Now when everything is vaguely remembered.

Sleep with me. For days we've played with the meaning of those words. When you told me I like you, I thought it could mean many other things. But we eventually settled for its ultimate meaning. We left it at that.


My time of the day had always been ahead of yours most especially when you moved from the holy city to the ghetto. On a stormy week here (that was in June), you even instructed me to indicate the time on the SMS I sent to you. It was pointless anyway--you see, it was me who always easily gave up--however you said it was just fine. You can calculate the time backwards. You explained, "I wanted to know for how long the messages get delayed. And please, get to the computer. Your phone is crappy."


You were just like me because you were very breakable and you accepted reasons so long as they're well-defended. Until we canceled each other out. I think I've put myself too much in you that when you were finally gone, I could not find myself, too. And you did not even let me say good bye.

(Somebody asked me, "Up to what account do you intend to continue this?" In fact, I fear that this would ever cease. If I stop, that means I have exhausted all that there is to be recounted. I will struggle to launch forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself.)


*****

I may have lied about who I am, but I have always been truthful about how I felt. After all, it was he who said that love has no simulations. Despite the lies, my love, I believe has no illusions.

"What I like most about you today," he told me once, "is that you did not run away." Touche. It was so like me to stick around even when he was being his most difficult. When he wrote me a letter, it had not been actually intended to state something. It was sort of a pre-warning to gauge how far my endurance would go. Understanding the letter itself required patience. To fail before such text was to fail before the persona who had written it. The intention of the text was apart from its meaning. The intention was primary; its meaning, secondary.

(It's as if you care that my life consists of rain, chiaroscuro, sfumato, trees, open spaces, white walls, and open-ended dreams where I wake up crying.)

Sleeping is a solitary activity done in company. In fact, in my life now, everything is a solitary activity done in company. This is what solitude is. I understand why a close friend associates silence with solitude.

I know now how solitude is different from loneliness. Solitude is something you learn to live with. You walk on the streets away from your workplace, and you pause to check the feeling that you have forgotten something behind, yet never able to remember what that thing is. Solitude does not make you miss anyone. It is when you would not allow an Other to penetrate your thoughts. It is when you do not care if you exist anymore and if anyone recognizes your existence. Loneliness is something you tell the whole world that you are feeling. Loneliness is the awareness of the feeling in-itself, and it is always associated with an urge to fend it off by doing something about it. Whereas solitude is almost a feeling of resignation. To quote my close friend, of being "tired of chasing after things."


Most important of all, solitude is a long-term feeling, while loneliness is something that does not always last. Perhaps this is the reason why Garcia-Marquez had rather named his book One Hundred Years of Solitude than One Hundred Years of Loneliness.

 Lent came early last year; it had been on March.

"A Jew and a Catholic. What could be a more guilty couple?" He asked me once. Still it had not been posed as a question, but a declaration. That was how he usually presented things to me, through statements which initially seemed like questions.

I was roused from my nap this afternoon by the blare of the TV. My father, on the other hand, had fallen asleep in front of it while watching a live broadcast of a Jesuit priest's sermon. I wondered why I had not thought about it until now: M- and I never discussed anything about the passion of Christ, when we had talked about anything Jewish there is to be talked about. I met him on April, only days after I graduated from college a.k.a. when I deliberately missed the ceremonies.


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(I have always liked the Lent season. It's because TV channels don't air the usual crappy programs. Instead they feature 70's and 80's films with themes of catharsis and purgation. I just love watching how the Filipino films and actors were like decades before I was born.)

 Ninety-nine years of solitude left.

BEFORE HE WENT AWAY THE LAST MESSAGE HE SENT ME WAS "Sleep." It was not even "goodbye"—I guess it had not been so because he never wanted me to hear from him again. If you want to slip away you wouldn't think of bidding someone goodbye.

My guilt dreams commenced shortly after he left. There is a striking recurrent pattern in these dreams: He would be flying to Manila. I would meet him at the airport and we'd proceed to a mall because he would be looking for something. Two nights ago he was looking for food. Last night he was looking for a new watch. Just this afternoon in my nap, he was looking for a suit. He told me he would just try it on and would be back in a jiff. He had left me waiting for several minutes already when I finally went searching the fitting rooms and not finding him in any of them. Then I woke up. Part of the dream pattern is me waking up after a futile search.