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Five years ago, this was home.
Yesterday, I came back, feeling exactly the same way I did the first time I set foot here: I am transported not just to another place, but to another time. I am away from the rest of the world, and it is strange, scary...

Five years ago, this was home.

Yesterday, I came back, feeling exactly the same way I did the first time I set foot here: I am transported not just to another place, but to another time. I am away from the rest of the world, and it is strange, scary and delightful. 

It is exactly where I should be.

So many things have changed from the way I remembered it–new buildings, spots that have been completely renovated, restaurants that weren’t there when I was around, places that have been walled up as if they never even existed. But even then, my heart is filled with those lost things and lost places, for I have loved each one with equal measure; even though they will now exist only in my imagination and in the memories of those with whom I have shared them.

Conversations, laughter, the perpetual stream of footsteps, hot afternoons, cold nights, a mild quake, Christmas fireworks, the splashing of fountain water, whispers, the shuffling of notebooks and photocopied papers, words spoken and better left unsaid, silence–I know all the corners in which each one was made, and they remain like small dots in the puzzle-map of my soul. Send me to one of those spots and I will tell you what happened there, who adopted a cat, which path we took when it rained as if the sky had no mercy, what we were having for lunch, how much loose change I had in my pocket, who we were watching from afar, where we sat down for a while when we were drunk, sad, joyful or alone. I’ll tell you where we waited for miracles to happen, where we fought, where we hid from anyone who would figure out we were cutting class, where we told each other secrets. 

A different time. Different people. Same sky.

Thinking about all these things, I suddenly realize that I haven’t seen the sky outside of my village for ten months. And I haven’t seen the Manila sky in five years. 

theorchestraofmadness prose writing memories musings UST university of santo tomas journal

Early morning. Uncaffeinated.

I am texted by an unknown number. Apparently my name is now Mark, I bought “scarp” from Jackie, and I am cute. She informs me that all her numbers are available. She asks me where I work. She spells a kiss with double Js. The message, short as it is, registers in my brain like a puzzle that the keypad spewed out after a night of binge drinking. I wonder if the sender used her forehead to type instead of her fingers. 

I run to the kitchen, relieved to find that coffee is already brewing. Perhaps the caffeine would help me cope with these little intrusions from the outside world. I take the first sip, feeling a bit closer to finally becoming human for a time. But someone sends me a chat message with another stupid question, and I wonder which vortex this person’s common sense has been irredeemably sucked into.

I wander off into the veranda, which is perhaps the farthest I could get away from my tiny space, my office, my room. In the distance, I could hear old songs drifting from a radio. A thin sheet of white noise and bad signal breathes over the wind. Other sounds make it into my bubble of existence: Cars, motorcycles, people walking their dogs, dogs walking their humans, humans talking in a volume best suited for conversation across mountains. There is so much turbulent wakefulness around me that I feel as though the weekday has never left. 

I envy our cats lazing about in the garage. Nothing excites them at the moment. They sprawl themselves over the ground with nary a care for the world. Later on, when my grandmother comes home from the grocery, I discover the scene of a recent murder: A small rat lies dead near our gate. 

The world goes on without stopping. 

(Part 2)

theorchestraofmadness prose writing journal musings

The wind blows coolly from where I sit, as if winter is just about to begin in this strange part of the world that knows nothing about the snow. The closest we could get to experiencing snow is perhaps when we gaze at the clouds and feel their white, infinite softness fall ever so slowly… but not quite. Or maybe the ashes from a cigarette would suffice, their tiny crumbling forms–fire-stained murky snow–ferried gently away by the wind.

The world around me stirs with agonizing slowness. It is almost night. I can feel darkness beginning. The lights dim slowly. A part of me longs for summers lost, when we could walk home from school and feel the fingers of sunset touch the world and those beyond it. Now, I hardly go out. I am constantly plugged in a dream of monochrome. My body remains in place yet my mind wanders off into the landscapes of memory.

And I do not know if that is the best place to get lost in, especially when it’s this cold.

theorchestraofmadness prose memory musings writing journal thoughts