"we were gonna be in a band"

An embarrassing detail about my life I thought would have been funny to share considering how already desperately adolescent our circumstances were -- sneaking a cigarette every corner we can find and chugging cans of beer outside 7-11 with the rest of youngsters who've saved enough to buy themselves cheap iced tea to pass through an uneventful night in a dark city in the middle of nowhere facing a low-intensity protracted war as depicted by the number of security forces roaming the city, long arms in tow. What was the point of sharing an embarrassing detail if not to perform that I too am whimsical and shallow, wanting of attention and awkward. Awkward was all I had, really. A year has passed and there we were in a place, in a moment, in a place in our histories that shouldn't be, in an event that does not exist and will not exist except between the two of us and the uninvested strangers who witnessed our not being together together in a god-forsaken dusty town in the South.

It really is unbelievable how many moments we've managed to snatch away from our timelines. Not much but much enough to make a little bit much. That bit of much which is best kept to myself tucked neatly in casual friendly conversations we may still have in future or recollections of some time spent somewhere over the course of the year. It will be dishonest to say that what little much we have is not much to constitute what it takes to have something. And yet our experience tell us that its not much to build on. As we face this closure, we realize nevertheless that we will always have our anomaly, we will always have the most that we made out of our anomaly, we will always cherish the recklessness of our ambition, and every now and then our minds will wander back to those shared mornings waking up in each other arms, butterflies in our tummies, lips locked, breaths held hostage by the mystery of our bodies.

Love is not as messy a thing if there weren’t any non-loves. On that evening I caught your hands brushing my lower back and your elbows resting on my knees, on another occasion, fear overtook my body. The kind of fear one faces when at the edge of a train platform or building rooftops when one debates the possibilities and consequences of willingly jumping of or accidentally falling off. In this case, I didn’t know what it was. I just knew that a condition of possibility presented itself. And that a response was inevitable where both options lead to some amount of sustaining broken bones. Of course, that point was reached and where it was even possible to think of turning back time or disengaging from the logical unfolding of future events  was already breached. Only a dive would have closed this possibility. And that dive was really no more than a closure of an open sentence, to foreclosure the agony of wondering what could have been. But of course, experiences are never as simple, or as tempered as we would like them to be. So yes, this dive was not without another set of conditions pried open. As for encounters being loves and non-loves, well...

Dear comrade,

To have to love this much is to surrender one's death to repetition and elaborate reenactments. To have to accept the hell that comes with forgiveness is to constantly live in fear of the likelihood of you losing to predictability. To live with you is to choose to trust the known weakness of our emotions, the knowns we so stubbornly felt were nothing but an overrated excuse for breaking up or for loving someone else. To have to live with this love is to hold on to the promise of a complete overthrow of power and realisation of an ideal life where every man is truly free. And while noble I also know that this is a struggling revolution – a marginal struggle sometimes insulted, trampled and looked down upon and at times  falling prey to the selective amnesia also called mediocrity. 

memories whose only function had been to leave behind nothing but memories

Hey Dear,

It's been 2 days in Singapore and yesterday I had to stay most of the time at NTU sorting out and checking the gallery requirements. Then in the evening had a good performance near Beach Road and I remembered this place, this was near the Thai restaurant mall where we ate, also near where we took the bus to Malaysia. I remember those times I had so much dreams about you, and wrote them even - i have a record with me over the years. Today I went all over town and checked out places where I could find a cabinet for my installation, eventually I ended up in places that looked familiar, chinatown, etc then ending up in a new place, near bukit timah, near the horse tracks, horse city which is now an international school -- met up with a new friend, a french lady who has been living in singapore for 15 years. She has a nice studio set up there working with kids to do art and science, Denisa's friend. She showed me this really non-descript place which was a junk shop, a place filled with all sorts of objects, the place where Singaporean history objects come to die or await judgement, a place where they decay and wait for judgement from people - either to be discarded to be found. I found this place and found an old chinese medicine cabinet. I doubt many people in Singapore know about this place, I will take photos again tomorrow when I am back. But it's amazing, you would have loved it. A place where discarded things go and be forgotten. How come I wondered, we've never figured out this place. Then eventually, night fell, my friend dropped me off where I could get a bus to clementi. Everything's all too strange and familiar at the same time. Almost a lot of places tied up to memories of you. Remember I've spent a lot of time here with you over the years -- the last being 2010. I have strange feelings coming over me, both reminiscing, both trying to remember memories long distant, and then I had to go home. On my way home, I had to catch the bus before the route ended, just like what we did before to save up on money. Realizing how boring it is now, that I just go home to Ken's place, I mean I had to work and prepare for things today's gig and for the exhibition. I remember vividly how I wished I would go home with you and then we'd be together. But I guess this is just me being sentimental, a strange feeling, a flood gate of memories slowly coming back. Man, those were the days huh? It feels surreal every day I spent here, guess who I met randomly when I was performing the first night? Kirsten. It was such a long time haha, it was just randomly I saw her in the street with her friends then she went to my gig. Then luis, then kai, then everyone who I knew from before. It was a nice time, but at the same time it felt very "post happening" -- like of course time has moved on, people have changed, memories will just be memories. Sometimes I wonder what happens next. It's going to be even stranger when my new lover comes to visit me in Singapore, she's part of the tour - a new thing, I don't know yet but she's an old friend who I just saw with a new set of eyes then we connected. She knows about you of course, back in Manila all my good friends knew you. But I guess all I'm saying here is I do miss you all of a sudden, and somehow I know you're alright. Good night kiss.

Dear jungle book boy

The waiting and blinder-wearing started one summer in the middle of a jungle, surrounded by killer mosquitos and six o' clock prayer calls. In between pages of thick epic book, I learned to pretend it didn't matter or anything else at all. I learned to pretend that I could by myself manage through the each day -- cooking for one and/or two, an extra two bottles or cans of beer in the fridge just in case, another extra pack of cigarettes for unexpected company, a cool chick playlist to get by with, eggs and bread for when waking up with company and one or two movies to get me through unaccompanied evenings. It was habit I've learned to effortlessly slip into, a coping by with my lonesome. 


That was when I meet you and pretended that didn't matter. Then the afternoons became unbearable until the sun set when it was the time to slip into a make-believe world that I pretended didn't exist just to make the morning after bearable. Sometimes, those afternoons turned into day trips and sleepovers -- a routine that went on for some weeks until I started pretending we were in love just so I didn't have to pretend that it didn't matter or anything else at all. And then those patches of hours in the day became blurry and blurry as the nights slipped into days until we've started exchanging shirts. Then I knew that I have for sure thrown myself into the nasty habit of pretending nothing mattered just so I could learn to cope when this was all over -- pretending that the end was inevitable and that nothing could not be remedied by a playlist to get by with. 


But I was mistaken...


The pretending had ended even before it has properly begun...I've broken my own heart minutes before you broke it -- a preemptive attack I must have unwittingly committed just so I could go on pretending nothing had really ended.

24.04.2011 --

I still have a secret crush on you and still secretly fantasize about being together one day. And I still secretly scour around details of your life that I still don't have the courage to ask about; only because I don't want you to think that I love you more than you think I do. And I still secretly withhold saying "I love you" because I am still secretly scared that this is all a ride that will end anytime soon. And I still secretly wonder if you've ever wrote them the same lines you did to me or ever spoken the same phrases you did to me or touched them the way you did me or held them, kissed them and cried to them the way you did to me. I know fully well that to think that what we have as ours and ours alone is absurd, and still, I secretly wish that they were exclusively ours to share and one day look back to, tell our children and our grandchildren until they're sick and tired of it. I still secretly keep tabs on how many steps we used to keep apart from each other -- of the distance we so carefully maintained, of the intimacy we silently shared, of the future we used to hesitantly talk about, of the tomorrows we so carefully tried never to bring up, of our fear that it could work for us, of the disappointments we never dared speak about, of the time we used to steal and still do, of the public that doubted us and still do, of the space we constantly negotiate, of how I feel that you and I are in both ways the same and different, of how despite of us and what we've managed to keep I still believe that I cannot do with you. I still secretly fantasize about running away from you because I secretly want you to run after me. That way I could tell for sure if I am the one and you are the one. Because (I am afraid to admit that) I still believe in such silly romantic things; but you know that of me already.

I still ask myself at times, if this is really happening. I still ask myself if we will ever come to that precipice when we have on several instances already did. And why I still do? I don't know. Sometimes, it still feels not real, or real but not Real.

Of the things we both know and don't know about, we've agreed to assume doesn't matter. Still, of this complicity to grammar that we've contracted ourselves to, what obligation to each other do we really uphold and uphold to keep?

13.10.10

it was name we've grown to call you, sometimes we allow ourselves the little pleasure (also sometimes conveniently called guilt) to wonder how you will turn out to be and turn our lives over until that day that you will finally arrive. we've both entertained the thought of you being our object cause of desire only because we are afraid to say we are happy to have you, because that doesn't seem to be allowed. funny that even now, when the supposed thresholds have finally been crossed not without collateral pay-offs still that mundane privilege seems to ambitious. and whatever reason you decide to come, maybe just to ease my previous anxiety over loss or my perversity to call the bluff, i am still unable to grasp. But here you are growing to be that silent parasitic companion feeding on the same thing vessel of which is also my decay. They say the second time around should be easier--a walk in the park. Well not much parks where we live, only in our distant nostalgic sentiment of our childhood that seems to be that thing that bind us. And when those fears will ever go away I cannot say for sure but I promise that I will be everything that I can be because each other is all we might have.