The trees forgive me

I wrote about missing this one here, about sleeping there, and losing that one, no the other one. I read about the love of a good woman, the spectacle of the scaffold, and how this sissy boy got whisked away by the goddess of love. I wrote about this woman whose sister kept the hair they cut off years ago, I wrote about that man waking up from a dream of the way his mother's lips sounded like when she talked. I read about how the children must stay, about this bacchanalia on the hill of some guy named Samuel. I said, Get me something pretty, when I should have said, Spartan, come back with your shield or on it, sabay hi-five. I said, 'Pag malamig, pasok ka na lang sa tent, alam mo na gagawin dun. Tribute to Heath Ledger. He's dead. The Joker killed him. The earthquake in China killed off some pandas. Pandas are cute. You are too. You are currently in an earthquake zone. At dahil cute ang pandas at namatay sila sa earthquake, ingat ka kasi cute ka at nasa earthquake zone ka. Sabi ng nanay ko, marami raw umiyak nung linibing yung mga panda. Cute kasi sila. Tsaka onti na lang sila. Hindi hassle na libu-libo namatay dahil sa lindol na pumatay sa mga panda. Marami namang tao sa mundo. Population control 'yan ng Mother Nature, sabi ng Philo teacher ko. Onti lang ang panda, marami namang tao, kaya iniyakan yung panda. Cute rin sila. Cute ka, pero naks, anong gagawin ko sa maraming tao? Kaya mag-ingat ka, puwede? Uy. Tsaka hindi 'to masyadong related, pero sabi rin ng nanay ko, "I wish I had someone to talk to about intellectual things, but then I realized: I have nothing intellectual to say. All I have are novels and Newsweek." Sabi ko, "Ah."

Segue.

I grew tired of the bed growing while I slept, so I finally moved in to that place in Escaler. Bisitahin niyo naman ako. Cool place. I bounce on the bed, though I doubt I'll find the time to do some (literal) bed-bouncing. I can smoke, as long as I blow the smoke toward the mango tree at my window. Do mango trees have kapre (ang conyo-plural ba ng kapre ay kapres?) Yeah, I think so. That's cool, though, he and I will have a lot in common. I sleep tonight in an empty room. Beside my bed is another bed with floral sheets. It's empty too, in an almost lurid kind of way. There are drawings of the male anatomy on the walls. The last tenant must have been very lonely. Or repressed.

Segue.

Yesterday, in Recto, I was on my hands and knees, unearthing Doctor Faustus and John Milton. I went home with dirt under my fingernails, my mom calls it nerd-dirt. Nerd-dirt. That's like having slashes of ink on your palms because you dropped your pen into the black hole that is your bag; like having orange highlighter marks on the sides of your fingers because your hand can't keep still when you read something intellectual. Like, dude, na-a-agit ako. Bakit? Dude, Philo 104, dude. Brother na lang, parang si Desmond. Ah, Desmond. Sawyer has a daughter in Albuquerque. I should look up how to spell Albuquerque. What's in Albuquerque? Miss, I think you dropped your Albuquerques.


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Happy Father's Day to my daddy who likes to send me text messages from Imus that go like, "Ineng, pataba ka. Tsaka tayo ng maayos, ipalipat mo na 'yang likod mo sa boobs mo."