VIOLENCE

I’m gonna be re-reading Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close for the 4th time. -sigh-

tonight, at cyc, trash talk will be playing at 7pm. i’m gonna miss out, definitely for i already made plans way before even the show was announced. welp, i hope you guys will have fun (which i’m sure you will) and if you live in fresno and have nothing better to do, go, go, go! 

the image of a blind man being sang to by a girl about the galaxies and its wonders has been stuck in my head. it pops up like a recurring dream from my childhood.

lately, i have been having flashbacks of moments from my childhood back in manila. it’s been haunting me and i gladly sway my arms and head back and forth gracefully enough to push me..back to her arms.

i’ve missed you.

whenever i smell the sweet hallucinogenic fragrance of sampaguita, it cradles me back to that day, one of my days of innocence, where the sun peeks right through the fluffy gigantic clouds of that dreary city. i held no money in my pocket but my feet were enough to take me everywhere i wanted. it took me everywhere. the sun followed my footsteps and lit the dusty air contaminated by corrupted minds and their breathing. filling, yet sickening, i just now realized how horrible my childhood was. 

back then, i saw more crimes than i saw my own parents. i greeted the same sky above me for three years with horrifying screams as i pull my pants up from being molested with the bare hands of life. with my cousin constantly strangling me with ropes that leashed me like a stray dog, i looked up with the same sky with the same sun peeking through the same fluffy gigantic clouds screaming for my mom’s name as if she’d come down from heaven to save me…and for once touch me and cradle me back and forth like dreams i’ve woken up from. 

i’ve missed you, i’d tell her but

she never showed up. 

i 

i i

i i i 

remember waking up around 4 in the morning when i was 5. i woke up to the sounds of talk radio and scratching screeching voices of vendors march around the neighborhood screaming, screaming, screaming…it never really worked for me. i screamed so much when i was younger but i don’t remember a time when i was heard. 

i remember entering this room in our house back in navotas where i was greeted with flying plates and swaying fists faster than bullets that lit the room like they were fireworks during new years. i never knew that each fuck’s, cunt’s and shit’s and fists against faces will make everything better. i was pushed in a corner along with my cousins terrified and shaking. we were so young but their bruised fists punched the innocence out of our beating hearts and delicate ribs.

when i was five,i learned how to spell family but no one ever told me what the word meant. instead, i found the streets— lit by the scavengers and lonely stray cats and their masters— that taught me family meant closeness, comfort and love…they taught me that i never had nobody but myself. 

my mom left us when i was 4. i brushed my own hair and asked my dad how i looked before i go to school and he’d say that i was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. i’d walk through the hallway to the bathroom and come back to his arms where he’d whisper to me that i can be the next supermodel…just as long as i’d take care of my legs and sit up straight. 

7 months after my mom left, my dad left us as well. he pretended to leave for a quick phone call and said he’d come back right away. i waited patiently. i waited for him to come back and put back his bags down and stay. 

and until to this day, i never heard him speak although we’re separated by thin walls and under the same roof. i’m waiting patiently for him to come back. i’ve waited patiently.

outside our house in the streets, people walked with crooked legs and bent backs like dying flowers on pavements. i was one of them. i modeled the most inefficient building running through clutters of dust formed by sandstorms and newspapers headlining about the murder down the street. the streets taught me that there will never be peace without gossips and rumors. 

a kid running around with a piece of wood with rusty nails stuck at the end of it waving it back and forth to greet his friends in the face.

a mother cheering his son as he beat his friend up with hia 5 year old fists playing against the sandbox of his friends eyes. pushed him to the ground, inhale and exhale, inhaled the corrupted air, and ended it with a spit of his face. 

the girl being raped in a classroom after band practice. her teacher told her she didn’t have to pay any admission just as long as he gets to touch her breasts.

a boy having the cops called on him because someone found out that during lazy afternoons of summer, he’d take of his friends clothes off of her and play with her touching her violently just like how he saw it on the movies. 

the image of my cousin sitting on the staircase of an abandoned building with his forehead bleeding so hard i could hardly tell it was him.

what is childhood? because if childhood means innocence, clear conscience, and purity.. then i guess, i’ll never learn how to spell the word. my eyes didn’t see what the world was supposed to be for a young delicate sampaguita, my eyes didn’t see rainbows and butterflies like the murals back at school in second grade, but just the same sky and the same clouds and the same sun that peaks through the fluffly gigantic clouds.

once i’ve learned to untie the rope the suffocated my throat i sang..i sang to a blind man about the galaxies and told him that we are made out of star dusts and whenever i find nightmares down the street, i look up to the same sky. 

there’s so many ideas and goals running through my mind lately. my hands can’t keep up with my dreams; i almost feel so lethargic without even having to move a muscle or do anything physically except to think. 

lately, i’ve been listing down short-term goals and things to buy for future projects. and now this is another list of the things i’ve accomplished so far this week, heh.

• my sampaguita (arabian jasmine, grand duke) plant is blooming. i’ve been taking care of her and watering her daily. 
• passed my permit test, heh
• meditating daily
• finishing two books this week
• bought more books from b&n

I can never leave my house without a book. And whenever I do—the moment I realize that I do—an immediate headache and a sickening feeling down my chest creeps in. A good example is right now: in the car on my way school, feeling anxious and nauseous.

it’s really sad that i’m on the phone with this lady from a culinary art asking me about the things i’m interested in and my accomplishments in my life so far. i could that she’s taking notes about me as i list her the ‘stuff’ i’m passionate about. ‘so, i’m hearing that you enjoy creating things with your hands. you’re very well-rounded.’ blah blah blah. i think i’t just really sad that i spent half an hour this afternoon talking to this lady about culinary school and somehow finding myself finding comfort as she repeats the things i told her i could do. then, it became a confident boost, like a parade for the depressed recluse. she threw me confetti of affirmation; everything’s shit.

. i’m terrified. i’m terrified of the future. i’m terrified of the things that i visualize in my head. 

it is 5:23 in the morning, a tuesday and i am up thinking about films that i have watched recently that somehow made a remarkable impact on me. i’ve been on a look-out for films that may inspire me to find a way to let out my ideas flow smoothly and fabricate a style from a diligent observation of camera works, different POV, strong story lines, heartfelt dialogues that are basically poetry in different voices, and symbolism, etc. 

• Mammoth 
• Terri
• Uncertainty
• Squid & the Whale
• Me & You & Everyone We Know
• The Darjeeling Limited
• Tiny Furniture
• Beautiful Losers
• A Life Less Ordinary
• Please Give
• Rocket Science

*I highly recommend

If you have any movie that you would like to recommend, just message me it. I would appreciate it very much. Thank you <3

hello hello to you who reads my blogs..whoever you might be.

today’s been really weird. i feel like i’m in a different place. it’s the lighting in the my house, i swear. 

all i did today was..sit in front of the tv watching the office, wilfred and cheesy movies all while studying for my permit test that i plan to do on monday. wish me luck. i have to review it tomorrow because i’m not gonna fail that test, haha. 

everything’s going by so fast. it feels like yesterday, i was just a sophomore at central hating school and looking forward for school to end and go to photography class. then, getting in trouble for always being late for my ceramic class which i hated. the teacher hated me and how ironic is that that her son and i have the same birthday? heh. i didn’t like highschool very much but if i were to say something that i actually like about it..it would probably be the fact that i didn’t have to work so hard to get into classes like what i did this past week. but i’m glad i’m out of that shithole. 

my classes this year aren’t bad at all. i have yoga on mondays and wednesday and 3-d design every tuesday and thursday nights. woop. and my film class doesn’t start until october. i have made some few friends but i still feel lonely but i have a feeling that i’ll be feeling like that for the whole semester. oh well. 

i have a headache and i just wanna sleep all night and wake up and feel better. blah blah blah. i miss david. 

i’m gonna be cleaning my room all night. i haven’t stayed home all day for a while.

damnit, i keep repeating myself. 

hello. it’s been awhile since i’ve written something here updating about what’s going on with my life. it’s just been pictures with obscure and ungenerous captions/descriptions about them. and the ‘documentation’ of my life has been ineffective lately as well, haha. it’s been a tug-of-war between social life in the real world and the social media where all my virtual ‘friends’ feed off each other’s blogs and statuses to keep sanity and away from boredom. pft.

anyway, it’s wednesday today. 5:37am. i have a class at noon today for hatha yoga. it’s my first year at city college and coming in without any classes registered to my name may sound a bit tough at first but the ‘luck’ and/or ‘blessing’ granted to me has been helping me, haha. so far, i’ve got three classes! i just got lucky with yoga..with that raffle thing we did to finally fill up the remaining two spots in the classes. this girl and i got the pieces of paper with a star on each. 

i also have a film class that doesn’t start until october, i believe. or whenever 18 weeks is from now. 

and today, i just got registered to 3d-design class which i wasn’t really expecting to be added to. lately, i’ve been thinking about sculpting and designing something in 3d that i might add to my room…and hey, now, i got the chance to really do it. 

whew. 

it’d hit my mind sometimes that i still feel so young and out of place but it seems like i can handle whatever comes my way this semester with my classes. sometimes, i’d think that if i was still a senior in a regular high school, i wouldn’t have to worry about sitting in and praying to all the gods out there just to get in a class. but i kinda like it-the fact that i have to battle and find a way just to get in one class. 

also, a permit test to pass on thursday, i must do. 

the sun’s rising already and i’m just about to sleep. my lips are chapped. 

and opera class is boring and freaked me out.