a year ago, i wrote this and meant every word of it. now that it’s out, my first published poem…well, Joey Albert said it better (and in perfect pitch,too)…I remember the boy, but I don’t remember the feeling anymore 
the artwork, though, is fantastic! it is by two time CAMMA-winning editorial cartoonist and Palanca awardee Josua Cabrera, whose artistry has found a new medium: pixels. enjoy!
i haven’t left the house in two days.
my brother calls me the hermit, snuggled in my tiny shell…like the crab, thank you…and not in a Unabomber kinda way.
when i wake up in the morning, i head on to my little corner that overlooks D. Jakosalem. the morning sunlight streams in, and i break it up by drawing half the shade, just enough to allow a sliver in. i turn on the computer and head on to the loo. anne’s “trigger” is talking to me, my brother’s is choosing DVDs at Joaquin’s house, mine is sitting in front of the laptop. with number two done, i start work.
i surf for the paper’s entertainment stories (at most an hour) and write the stories that keep piling up in my to-do list (at most, forever). gawd, i have to finish the Mooon article, the Shang chef story, and my Fads and Trends for the Cebu Yearbook. but this damned writer’s block just keeps getting in the way. i try to get past it (nudging myself over the block forcibly) two ways: maybe i just need a drink, go out with friends to gulp down a couple, and find myself unable to write because of a serious hangover; or…shop. i headed on to the home section to buy new shower curtains,a matching hamper, sheets, and do the grocery with my faithful wingman,and come home unable to write because i am too pooped from redecorating this cozy shell
i recently found a third way to try and get over the block: exercise. this week i’ve gotten back to the healthy habit of walking for an hour in the abellana track, increasing aerobic activity just might do the trick. no such luck. what it did, though, was open up a whole world of possibilities…i had no idea so many cute guys hung around the track in various stages of undress
maybe i should try writing at a different time…late in the evening? when the world is shutting down, can i rev myself up to put words on electronic paper? or perhaps i just need a new place to do my writing, after all, i got myself a laptop for that reason: i fancied myself an ambulant wordpress at one time or another.
someone suggested more sex. that’s one more than what i have now, i daresay, teeeheeee. any suggestions?
me
photos: my morning corner; my shower goes Paul Smith!
We find our deliverance in the strangest of places.
Mine came in a song, thrust to me in a palpable sense of urgency, in a quickening, a surge. My Mother-of-Pearl Pia bent time around me as she asked for a pause, in her car, as we listened to the first few bars of For Good.
Pia had just come home from watching Wicked the musical in Broadway,and just like everyone else that has seen (or heard) it, one is changed, indelibly, permanently, by it. I’ve heard it said people come into our lives for a reason, Idina Menzel’s Elphaba starts. Pia and I nod (she, knowingly; I, tentatively).
Who’s to say if I’ve been changed for the better, Kristin Chenoweth’s Glinda the Good cuts in, but because I knew you…I have been changed For Good.
By the time the song ends, I am in tears, and Mother-of-Pearl lets me go to attend to wounds whose scabs the words have carelessly dislodged.
Since then, and especially this week, forgotten scars needed the salve again. I had to play For Good for a friend who did not want to go quietly into the night. She went noiselessly, nary a rustle, yet left a bang so loud not even frantic, panicked, disgusting pleas could silence. She slid into a pool of her own peace, slicing into it without a splash, but leaving a wave so large it threatens to drown those whose comeuppance is long overdue. Cryptic? Not really, we all knew. Know.
For once, I wish for a ghostly visit. To congratulate her for a feat I was too busy to celebrate, to lend an ear that was too occupied with noises of its own, to have asked her–even belatedly–to have hung on. Why didn’t you hang on? When your road forked, I could have reminded you of the other meaning. But you were the poet, you knew better where to turn your words towards.
i’m one to talk, as hanging on was never one of my stronger suits. This week i also said goodbye to the show, abruptly and without a forwarding address. I simply disappeared, in one way or another. Incompetence had whittled down my patience to nil, and it was already rubbing at my raw nerves.
Jud Morning grew phenomenally into something that their feeble minds could no longer comprehend, perhaps, pushing us into a precarious plateau–with no ascent in the horizon, and a sinister chasm in the offing. I was tired of dumbing myself down, and Last Minutes, and Unfinished, and Hurried.
I truly did not care about the ratings, they are a matter to be taken personally by those in the second running, by the catchers-up. How boring it must be, if one was to suspend reality and imagine, to have a monopoly. No choices. Just That One. A single channel. The Other made each of us a better deal, a wiser mind might deduce. But none was the wiser.
The deal, as Billy–who is not one to lavish praise–made clear to me is this: Jude, good job. And stay relevant. How could I do that, and maintain a fighting stance, if two hands were tied behind my back to one leg? And then some.
The show had ceased to become relevant, and had begun to become a farce of what it was in the beginning.
It’s a good thing we are a forgetful lot, it will make it easier to live this down. To re-claim Bacalso from Morning.
It’s a bad thing that we are a forgetful lot, it will make it harder to keep Ana relevant. To re-claim her from Meddlling and Muddling.
Perhaps, finally putting these thoughts down, will help. To both, a hearty fare thee well. Oh yes, roads will cross–sooner, later, When.
Who’s to say if I’ve been changed for the better. But because I knew you…
I have been changed For Good.
The cake topper says it all. Noel’s cousin Ica, who flew in from LA with her husband-to-be to get married in Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo, chose well.
this is just a test,you guys…this blog under construction…discovered that you can add photos!
me
i almost threw a hissy fit when we arrived at the San Carlos City pier.
“Mao pa gyuy pag larga sa barko,” the trisikad driver triumphantly informs. and just in case my dismay wasn’t apparent behind the Versace bug-eyes, he pauses and underscores the alacks and alases with: “Makit-an pa gani nimo ang lobot pag liko o!” it was a minute after four.
we sped off to Guihulngan, a good hour away to catch the 5:15. busoy, wenwen’s twin brother was already waiting for us at the Toledo pier, and i had to call him to meet us at the Tangil pier in Dumanjug instead. i hate inconveniencing other people, knowing that he had to travel further to the other pier, negotiating some rough territory in Aloguinsan. i was silent for the full hour, which hung heavily in the car. a silent jude is not a happy jude.
“There’s the boat,” Michael echoes the triumph in the trisikad man’s voice. we made it in good time, and i breathed a sigh of relief that came out in a sentence: “I would have killed you if we hadn’t made it.” but i was already smiling. i would have loved to have gone to Dumaguete to catch the midnight boat to Cebu, if it wasn’t for busoy on the other side. maybe next time, eh?
“Oh, no…not airconditioned,” I sighed as we made our way to the 2nd tier of the ferry. i was all set to go on bitch mode again when the lady with the apple mangoes sped past. Ay,kalami! i bit into the salted raw mango and grimaced in delight…this was heaven! shrugging off my gloom, i quickly surveyed the, ahem, snack bar and took in my favorite chips: taquitos! I was saved. little did i know that the silver lining behind all this hassle was still to come.
a few minutes into the trip, i tell Jesse Glova (my makeup artist) that if it was morning, and given the glassy sea, there would have been dolphins along the Tanon strait. he nods, expecting nothing…and moves to take a leak when, suddenly, out of the still water…a head bobs! then two,then four…dolphins! i scream for him to come back as the passengers are enthralled by a single dolphin that jumps, twists, and swims beside the boat for a good 10 minutes. the family travels with us halfway to Cebu.
“Di na sila musulod ug Cebu kay hugaw naman ang tubig,” Jesse jokes. but there might be some truth in that. as soon as we come close to the Tangil pier, flotsam and jetsam of a sinister kind greet us: plastic bottles and all sorts of nonbiodegradable packaging. the biologist in me shuddered.
but the treat was A treat. i had to travel to Palawan to see dolphins in the wild when they travel alongside inter-island vessels a few kilometers from home all the time.
hissy fits just seem so unecessary when the sun sets on Canlaon volcano behind you, hiding behind muted red clouds, the glassy sea broken in places by a dolphin showing his stuff beside you. and singing bahasa songs, we lull ourselves into seeing the silver linings.
