Does it bother you? Does it bother you that you’ve never had the chance to experience such a sensation? Or such a sensation even exists in the first place? Does it bother you that there’s a possibility that you are actually numb or crazy? Does it bother you at all?

I can tell you firsthand that such feelings really do exist. That through some twisted machination of the psyche such turbulence of sentiments actually lies deep within you. Waiting. Like a ticking time bomb. Piling like skeletons, like those you have in your closet, same, as those rotting flesh hidden underneath the floorboards of your house. Those emotions are dangerous. Extremely dangerous. You have to let them out sometimes, like you do with your dogs. Perhaps, during a dull Saturday afternoon, yes that would be nice. If that doesn’t work, burn it off, like that fast paced accumulating layers of 185 pounds of fat on your belly. Try all sorts of stuff, let your imagination run wild! Burst like a stream of youthful exuberance, don’t hide it, suppress or worse – repress.

And if all else fails, lie down stare at the ceiling p, out the music of your choice on and bleed. Let it flow, slowly, by its own accord, let it go, like everything else: your wife, your husband, your college degree, like your everything else. Since you’re so good at letting things go do the same damn thing here. The feeling is often awkward; you’ll probably remember your first time of something… school? Sex? Driving test? I don’t know. But one thing’s constant. The feeling. It could either be as violent as that as your present state of mind or as peaceful as that of waters on the eye of the storm. But whatever, comes or happen, just let it be, you are right where you’re supposed to be. Just keep the pace. Slooowlyyy…

And when you’re done?

Sleep.

Then finally wake up to reality.

Silence.

Feeling good?

Yeah, keep it that way.

I’ve long accepted the fact that the possibility of me ever having a significant other is slim jim.

Here I am again sitting nearby my window, laptop by my side, Norah Jones on my ear, dishearkening thoughts on my mind and persistent hope on my thumping heart. Keeping me awake and filling my eyes with tears.

Call me corny but I often dream and fantasize of my possible significant other; in a non-perverse way of course. I always go for the aesthetics. Like the first meeting, the second glances, the third date by the boulevard, the four kisses by sunset, the fifth letter from him to me during vacation, the six minutes worth of stolen moments, the seventh missed calls by midnight, the eight time I’d answer in nine swerving seconds I’d wait and in the tenth I’d hear the tender voice “I miss you, I wish you were here”. All those inanities I’d make up as I capitulate over the tenderness of the thought of the possibility it would ever come true.

“I would cross the endless sea

I would die in Ecstasy

But I’ll be a bag of bones

Driving down the road alone…”

I sometimes just can’t help but be a masochist, it seems that the more I think of never having to be able le to experience this the more I feel content about it…

Strange, is it not?

But that’s okay.

That way…

It could remain that way forever..

Like a box at the break of Christmas morning…

Your expectations, all the possibilities… the thrill of not knowing fills you with exhilaration to last you a lifetime.

Like a dream, the joy never ceasing.

A dream you’d wish you’d never wake up from.

“I don’t know why I didn’t come…”

But that’s a risk I’d be willing to take

Despite the possibility of the shattering of a dream, a perfectly real illusion.

You are my dream, my perfectly real illusion.

…

..

.

-repeat playlist-

I’m sorry I haven’t been with you for nearly a week as rehearsals for the play becomes more tedious by the day that I find blogging, or taking a break for that matter a subject of absolute luxury.

To be honest, there isn’t really much to tell you guys about my life now. Basically it’s just a 2-1-2 routine: School- Rehearsals- Sleep; repeat, then after that nothing. I barely have a social life now. Besides lunch and occasional coffee trips here and there I mostly spend my time sleeping. After said habitual lunch after class, (probably somewhere in Dapitan) I’d immediately jostle my way through the muddled streets of Espana, board meself to a passenger jeepney, make me way up the goddam stairs, lock the door the door and throw meself into sweet oblivion only to awaken up two to three hours later from angry phone calls from the Stage Manager scolding me for being fifteen minutes late for the start of the rehearsals.

I really miss living that easy slow paced life of mine back in me first year. Everything just seems so non-complicated back then. Now, everything’s fucked up. But that’s okay. It’s the kind of fucked up I like: Mental, fast paced, gory… I’m living a life here.

Come with me, lay down with me, and let’s spend the afternoon together.

You are a marvel, an everyday delight, a blessing on a dark dreary afternoon, the silence deafening, you were a stranger, a lone figure outside the cold dark room. Proudly standing, gently staring, ceaselessly mystifying. You brought with you the scent of comfort, a sense of home; the whites of your skin perfectly radiating, on place that light did not shone. It seemed to me strange, so strange, that I find myself content upon seeing you, being drawn to you;

Ears burning, knees buckling. The lines of your face combined together in such a beautiful way that I suddenly lost all will to make my mouth say.

In me burns the powerfulest of desire to hug you; if that is even a word. You threw my mind my off swiftly and completely absurd. My body trying to fight the urge, with my heart praying that I may finally lose.

Touch my hand, feel my fingers, let’s innocently sleep together. My sweetest downfall, cuddle in closer, I want to know how it feels to be above your skin, count the marks on your hands and hear your bones make sounds at each move, see the strands of your hair quiver with each breeze that pass by. And watch you sleep as time flies by.

Each touch, makes each cell of my body heave and sigh. The feeling, so alien, so cleansing; like ecstasy. I was suspended in a spell. Hopelessly trapped in a world fabricated by colour clouds of ’69 and the fancies of our lilac filled minds. Foolishly believed in everything that passes the barriers of your mouth, enthralling, disillusioning, like infomercials.

At night, we slept with the sky open above our heads, with the secrets of our day buried underneath our pillow. And the wonders of our youth buried beneath the mantle all sallow.

We’d wake up in the morning without each other’s comfort, without a scintilla of doubt what we did last night was the result of our dynamic delight.

Bittersweet lover, let’s keep a map of the distance we’ve traversed.

So that we can keep doing it over and over.

We’ll end each day with a forceful thunder.

Until the lives of us gets torn asunder.

That way we’ll live, forever.

Come with me, lay down with me, and let’s spend the afternoon together.

You are a marvel, an everyday delight, a blessing on a dark dreary afternoon, the silence deafening, you were a stranger, a lone figure outside the cold dark room. Proudly standing, gently staring, ceaselessly mystifying. You brought with you the scent of comfort, a sense of home; the whites of your skin perfectly radiating, on place that light did not shone. It seemed to me strange, so strange, that I find myself content upon seeing you, being drawn to you;

Ears burning, knees buckling. The lines of your face combined together in such a beautiful way that I suddenly lost all will to make my mouth say.

In me burns the powerfulest of desire to hug you; if that is even a word. You threw my mind my off swiftly and completely absurd. My body trying to fight the urge, with my heart praying that I may finally lose.

Touch my hand, feel my fingers, let’s innocently sleep together. My sweetest downfall, cuddle in closer, I want to know how it feels to be above your skin, count the marks on your hands and hear your bones make sounds at each move, see the strands of your hair quiver with each breeze that pass by. And watch you sleep as time flies by.

Each touch, makes each cell of my body heave and sigh. The feeling, so alien, so cleansing; like ecstasy. I was suspended in a spell. Hopelessly trapped in a world fabricated by colour clouds of ’69 and the fancies of our lilac filled minds. Foolishly believed in everything that passes the barriers of your mouth, enthralling, disillusioning, like infomercials.

At night, we slept with the sky open above our heads, with the secrets of our day buried underneath our pillow. And the wonders of our youth buried beneath the mantle all sallow.

We’d wake up in the morning without each other’s comfort, without a scintilla of doubt what we did last night was the result of our dynamic delight.

Bittersweet lover, let’s keep a map of the distance we’ve traversed.

So that we can keep doing it over and over.

We’ll end each day with a forceful thunder.

Until the lives of us gets torn asunder.

That way we’ll live, forever.

January 12, 2012

I don’t know why I’m writing this exactly, especially at a time as drastic as this, but someway somehow, a strange force is compelling me to pour out the words on paper at this very moment; telling me: “If you do not do this now, then the gold worth of words may be doomed to be lost forever”.

I am not a good writer; my writing style does not even qualify as average. Oftentimes I adjudge it as something extremely below mediocrity. For most of my past works do not strike me as something worth looking back to or to be proud off.

Whatever it is I’m writing now, would certainly not contain any glorifying characteristic as regards to what my writing style is; as I judge myself inadequate to do so. Most of it– if not all, would only contain simple and as is description and my opinion towards my capabilities and as to what kind of a writer am I.

I write; as others would call: colourfully, but sometimes to me it’s just strikes me as something pretentious. My works are often laden with numerous, mouthful adjectives that are at times effective but most the time redundant. I have this natural tendency to use deep words that sometimes I myself sometimes do not even know the meaning in the first place. I remedy this by plunging myself wholly into a forest of thesaurus and dictionaries just to be sure that I am using it in proper context. Normally, normal people are bewildered by the end result of my work, providing me adulations for producing such a wonderful piece; when in truth I am torn with guilt that I have in my earnest tried so hard just to befuddle them with an ornately decorated stone, a feast for the eyes but certainly not for the soul.

I have a horrendous command of punctuation and literary direction, I am not good with commas, periods and what not, heck, I don’t even know when and why do we use the dash. All I have in my disposal is the unnatural affinity to words despite all these lacking factors.

Most of the time, my style and form of writing is either rhapsodic or mumble jumble hash dash spur of the moment words joined together forming awkward paragraphs that somehow someway works

My favourite writers are Anne Rice, Dan Brown, Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mannsfield. They have, in a way, influenced my style in a sense that whenever I read their works, I am compelled to write.

I keep a journal, a small white notebook I bought in a style store somewhere. It’s white with tribal art all over it with the word: Secrets, on its cover. It’s the third notebook I had and used for journal keeping since I started two years ago. I call him Logan. I used to call it Bruno, but the Bruno journal contained too many a painful memories so I opted to change it to Logan. Perhaps later I might change it again to Louis. The name depends on whomever artist I am immersing myself wholly on (and as of the present, despite my friends’ reluctance, I am obsessing myself with One Direction).

I write not out of inspiration but out of habit, although this one is a special case. My habit of writing developed after the journal thing happened. I usually write at night for it is then when my mind is most active.

I write stories, I’ve already compiled a whole bunch of unfinished stories on my secret treasure trove; that I would sometime open to just read where I last went off or where my mind was when I wrote that particular piece. Usually I just leave it there for most of them I do not know how to continue.

I usually listen to music whenever I write, it helps me keep my mind going and occupied and not sleepy.

I rarely show others my work for I am horribly shy with them and am truly afraid of being castigated for not being able to write something well enough for others to read; which makes my keeping a blog highly paradoxical after saying that.

-Alexandrinikkus Readman

Only months ago did I unveil to my followers how I lost my favourite Filipino language professor to cardiac arrest and how two months after and only weeks ago did my friend succumbed to leukaemia a day before the New Year, and now here I am again telling you all how my favourite Journalism professor/adviser died just a few hours ago. I have no other means of unadulterated release, so please bear with me as this post may become too sappy and personal for your liking.

I first met Sir Lim (or James Cartmire; his pen name) during my first semester for my sophomore last June. I was late for his class. When I entered the room, I immediately his tall figure and felt his dominating aura fill the room, he was giving a mock current events quiz (on his first day. I immediately went to my chair and got myself the one-fourth sheet of paper he required, not asked, for, and blankly stared at it as he gave out the questions. I didn’t know the answers so I just listened to him. His voice, not full but booming, he was scholarly in tone, sounds like one of them broadcasters in television, impeccable phrasing and precise pronunciation and doused with a jug of sarcasm.

I didn’t pass my paper. I mean, it’s just ten points.

Then in a crisp manner he said “That is just a taste of what you’ll be doing in my subject for the next months to come, a news test every meeting regarding current events; both local and international. And a weekly 500 word essay, of which I will require you to all reference correctly with sources, using the APA style of referencing, mind you that I will read all your works ad if I see one unreferenced material, that will be a ground for plagiarism, and I tell you, I am particularly strict with this policy of mine, I will see to it that you will get punished accordingly… and to start things off your essay topic for the week is ‘Discuss the importance of media in the society today’ that is 800 words to be passed on Monday, Arial, font size 11, single spaced.”

I nearly fainted after he said those words, the ironic thing is, despite my being a journalism student, I barely know anything about current events, nor did I have the slightest care for any political humdrum that’s happening around. Back then, all I cared about were food, boy bands and the coming fashion weeks in weeks to come. I barely can write a single concise paragraph, which will only have four rhapsodic sentences with several punctuation errors in between, let alone a one whole essay, one 500 words essay with a single topic and correct parenthetical noting. I knew then, that the coming months would be deathly hard.

Now, Sir Lim’s classes were… hard. He was a strong, commanding and horribly uncompromising professor. You either meet his deadlines or not. And his lectures, long, objectively based (After all, it’s History of Philippine Journalism) and lengthy. Oh, but you learn, yes you’ll learn. And you learn HARD. Mostly all of his lectures (the ones I was awake) are still embedded clearly into memory: the Japanese bombing, the Illustrados and their valuable contribution to the craft of writing, et al. Almost everything. The type of professor, that despite his stone-cold exterior, you get what you pay’s worth for and more.

Although, Sir and the whole class didn’t establish a more than ideal “personal” relationship; considering that we’re his advisory class, he has made good with us more than he probably thought he would. I mean, I get where he’s coming from. Being smart and overachieving and all; he was the former president of our society The Journalism Society and was the one who wrote its constitution, that he prefers business or rather takes business with his students more seriously rather than establishing personal connection with them.

As our final requirement for him we were required to make an essay, a group essay, not less than 1,500 words with the topic given to us, which I tell you was my personal absolute hell. It was one of the greatest miracles of my college life on how I manage to go through as such.

After barely making it through alive, we were able to finish the paper.

Sadly, a week after passing our papers, he told us that he would be on sick leave and won’t be able to teach us the final chapter.

Then two weeks after that, I then saw him being rushed in a wheel chair out of the faculty room, his face gauntly thin and looking unnaturally pale despite his dark skin pigmentation. The gravity of the weight he lost despite only being gone for two weeks was so shocking that I found myself in an absolute state of disbelief over the whole thing. He was just so weak and deathly thin, and was sweating gallons. He was then brought to the university hospital and went under intensive care unit. (If I’m not mistaken)

We heard hearsays that he’ll be back for the finals. We were hopeful.

On the day of our finals, everyone feverishly reviewed for his exam. As only a handful of us passed his prelims and barely even made the cut for his recitations and quizzes and all are still very paranoid over the result of his paper. Everyone was going bazzoongas and frantically crazy on reading up this and that, reading newspapers and overtly conceptualizing on certain topics to ready ourselves for the killer essay part of the exam.

The test was scheduled to start at 2 of the clock pm.

It was 1:55 already.

Chaos

Then 2:00 came

Nothing

2:05

Nothing

It was already around 2:20 when someone took the initiative to go to the dean’s office to check on the matter.

And by 2:25, the door clicked open. I think everyone, expected the 5’9 something man with the iconic glasses and jacket to enter the room, ready to give us the exam of our lives. But no, he wasn’t there.

It was Sir Salandanan who officiated the exam in replacement of Sir Lim whom he said is still in no condition to proctor the exam, but was kind enough to finish the whole thing despite his condition.

The exam wasn’t as hard as I imagined it out to be. Not even the least exciting. There was something missing in the room, an aura, an essence, a certain something. The feeling of finishing the whole thing’s just wasn’t as exhilarating as everyone expected it to be.

After that, we didn’t hear anything from Sir. Not on his blog, his facebook, not even on his twitter account.

On the day of the giving of our grades, it was late since he was still not fit enough to basically just do anything, nearly everyone of us cried when we all received a passing mark on his subject.

Weeks later after that, again, if I’m not mistaken, he tweeted this:

After that, we thought everything was already good for him since we were already allowed to visit him and he was finally discharged from the hospital and all that. We anxiously waited for his return, probably in a year or so. Until…

Yeah, until we got into this point in time.

The whole thing is just surreal. He was more than an adviser/mentor/teacher for us, he was in a way an inspiration to everyone he taught. I mean, I learned how to write good crap because of him!

And now he’s gone.

To you, Sir Lim, I know you’re happy wherever you are now, and know that you’ve been the best adviser for us and have influenced us more than you’ll ever know. Rest in peace dear professor.

“My hands may get stained by blood but I can always wash it off”

-Alexandrinikkus Readman

As to where this brouhaha of mine rooted from, well, I am proud to say, that after a long long hiatus from reading anything. I’ve finally finished reading something again something… scholarly.

It’s Helen Keller’s The story of my life.

I mean reading the whole thing and marvelling over her wondrously evocative and powerful command of language makes my work seem half paltry than in comparison with hers. Of whatever force that pushes her to accomplish such marvels, I wish for it to flow into my veins as well. Then perhaps, I’ll stop my aimless day to day rambling and actually do something worthwhile with my life.

I often wonder if her life would have been any different if in case she wasn’t afflicted with her sickness and all. Would she had been the same? Would she had been that potent a person as she was? Non-deaf and non-blind?

‘Thus it is that my friends have made the story of my life. In a thousand ways they have turned my limitations into beautiful privileges, and enabled me to walk serene and happy in the shadows cast by my deprivation.’

-Helen Keller

We all go through our own share of personal trouble, but what differentiates us from each other is the way we cope, fend and survive for ourselves sake. We cannot say that we are stronger just because we went through something harder. We’re not all raised in the same manner and disposition that would influence our way of surviving the way others do. Some have it better, whilst others wish they were better.

But we cannot also use this logic as a means of escape in the way of dealing with our own skeletons. We may not be as strong as them but we can be as brave as them. The innate perseverance that we have is a wondrous compensation to whatever it is that we may lack.

We live in a world filled with trying times and we do not contribute to its betterment by raising our own eminence and downsizing that of others. We are all obliged into joining hands, into reaching out and lifting the downtrodden.

So whatever you’re going through now, remember: YOU ARE NOT ALONE.

-Alexandrinikkus Readman

I disagree.

Scientifically yes, it maybe, I don’t know (I haven’t died before, have you?), but I do have a theory. I think, that it is the memory that goes last after hearing, for I have this belief that when you die, before you go to wherever it is that you go after. You go off to this place in out of the material plane where your mind and reality meets, this kind of place of abeyance where you are able to explore the doors of your yesterdays and ponder upon the possible future, I don’t know how to paint it. It would probably be all white, like the hospital, or black like my nightmares. It could be ornately decorated with a lot of literal doors like that of my dreams or plain, blank and dull like a nonsensical lecture.

I never really gave much thought on the saying that for most their greatest moment is death until I’ve read J.D Salingers Catcher in the Rye. Especially on that part where Holden talked about death, how he, wanting on his funeral, not flowers, not glamour nor burial, that he’d much rather prefer to be thrown into a lake than to suffer the trivialities and traditions that follows into burying the dead. Again, that part especially on when he said:

‘Boy, they really fix you up when you dead’

The inanity of it all.

Death, like chances, nobody knows when it’ll come or what follows after it.

I mean, in the end, who really knows anything. Right?

This post is depressing.

Death, be not proud (Holy Sonnet 10)

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

-John Donne

-Alexandrinikkus Readman

And because I’me a loser, I am only blogging about it now.

As I’ve told you in my earlier post, I was chosen as one of the few special participant performers from Teatro Tomasino for UST’s VELADA TOMASINA (related link here) held last January 25, 2012. Wherein, I was asked to play the role of Trinidad Pardo De Tavera to go around UST and preach and stuff and what not. So, if you happen to have gotten yourself “attacked” by some speech breaking bloke (who looked more of a vampire than a hero) in a deep baritone voice, yeah, that was me.

The Vampire Hero

pictures with blockmates

*costumes; courtesy of CCP

Sadly because of my monologue-ing I wasn’t able to take as much picture for myself as I wanted to. Strange though, a lot of people took my picture that day ,not a single one surfaced anywhere (loser). Aah, shame.

Anyway, did ya see me?