AT THE STOA

There is nothing like flight to make one think of, and maybe wish for, anchors. An anchor is usually made of stainless steel with a zinc plating, all metallurgical names reassuring in their purported weight, for that is an anchor's function: to reassure you of weight, staying still even and especially amid bludgeoning waves, should you so need it. In physical flights the metals involved are different - the metals in an airplane are aluminum and aluminum alloys (which are lightweight) as well as the metal of your innards (which, if lightweight, will become more lightweight, having discarded fluids). In metaphorical flights the metals involved will reverse from the physical ones - the more you encounter flight, the more you think of solid steel. Surrounded with a thing as whimsical as the air, you would long for something not so whimsical, not so shifting. The sea, however, is also whimsical, and shifting. So maybe the problem is not with metallurgy so much as leaving the gro...

I was about to write about bipolar II and borderline personality disorder yesterday evening, over a beer I shouldn't be having and on a carpet I should have cleaned one week ago. I started with, "The thing with bipolar II co-morbid with borderline personality disorder is that there is not one thing about them; they're a clusterfuck of motherfucking things. No, this is not an inspirational story." Yada yada yada, ended up with three or five other sentences, found that I cannot rope concepts and causality properly, and gave up. I just drank beer and disappeared from the world. I know, and I will repeat - neither of these things are things I should be doing. Come today I was mostly alright, stabilizing enough from the alcohol that I shouldn't have been having, and managed to be a functional adult. You, I imagine, are like that, say, after having had coffee, or a hug, or rest from whatever it is that life bludgeons you with. Or whatever it is that you bludgeon your...

I heard somewhere that were it not for entropy, time would not be linear for us. It being linear is the only reason why we can anticipate or remember, and why those words even mean anything to begin with, and why those words are the same words only facing opposite ends. However, the linearity of time is nothing compared to what the human brain does. It processes things as they happen, but it is only in retention and protention that it can understand what it processes. In short, our minds are never in the right time. There is no right time. There is no now. There is only anticipation or dread of a time that will end, and there is only memory of a time that has ended. The paradox in the entire thing, of course, is that without the now, neither of those states would be. And that is why time hurts. We are in it, things happen the order they do because of it, and it is merciless to the last second, especially when one has to leave. It is more merciless because of things that wi...

The neighbors had a birthday party again. It must be the layout of the street; it's perpendicular to the main road and not many cars pass by it. I can hear the clinking of empty bottles being put away, chiming in their memory of good times and promises of hangovers come tomorrow. I started reading again, after nearly a year of keeping away from anything beautiful enough to take me out of my head. I sort of wish I hadn't picked this particular book, Danielewski's House of Leaves , for it's an Ouroboros of a book and makes you devour your own mind. I am sort of glad I picked this particular book. I stopped reading after 300 or so pages, my eyes and head hurting, sipping tea that have long since gone cold, and staring at the window. The moon shows through the sliver of opening at my window, and I don't need it neither does it need me; it contains no hyperboles nor promises forgotten or broken, broken in their having forgotten, forgetting their brokenness fo...

There is a nothing that nothings Ever yawning as we speak And fall into silence And distance And time. It sledgehammers in every pause That lengthens into days And breaths between words And endearments And love. It is the only thing there is, A nothing that is there, A fall so complete in perfection and oneness It is almost like home.

[The pas ] is accomplished in its very impossibility, it enfranchises itself with respect to itself .                                       - Jacques Derrida, Aporias There is a certain but truistic problematic to saying, "I want to run away," for implicit in its very formulation is the assumption of a ground which begs for prepositions. "From where?" "To where?" If the ground is taken as solid enough, then the question itself is lent solidity, the solidity of a destination and of an origin. But a ground is nothing but the function of a distance. And like all things in matter which matter, distance, also like time, can be sliced. Even obliterated. One way to do so seems to be by closing this distance by proximity or unity; and the other way seems to be by opening this distance so wide that it no longer matters. But one can slice distance so thinly that it makes the grounds for closing ...

The sounds of cars, tricycles, motorcycles, jeepneys, peddlers, garbage trucks, police cars, ambulances, and everything else on wheels, including in all probability some random guy on a unicycle, unceasingly blare through my window. I have no view except for the second-floor apartment right across from mine, with its mismatched curtains and glaring white light that the tenants never seem  to turn off. I hear neighbors shout at each other about each other, and always, always , at 4:00 PM  I hear a young man shouting "MaAAaa!" outside his gate, as though he always, always  forgot the keys to his own house. In the mornings I smell the neighbors roasting fish for breakfast. Also in the mornings (and sometimes during the night) I hear someone faintly practicing classical piano across the street. It makes me take a break from listening to disembodied voices for a while, and smile, and try to identify which piece they're playing. There was a time when they were playing the nat...

Orpheus looks back , he cannot hear Eurydice follow him out of Hades. He had lost her once to the underworld, moved the gods by his deep song of grief, and was given leave to retrieve his wife. Without thinking too much about it, one can say that he looks back out of impatience, or that he looks back out of mistrust, or that he looks back just because he's an idiot. Whichever of these three you choose, it certainly can be argued that Orpheus was given a chance, a second one, to be with his beloved, a rare gift and a rarer actuality. That Eurydice dies shortly after their wedding is this myth's first tragedy, that Orpheus lost her again , after being given permission by the gods to get her back, is its second. Briefly, again without thinking too much about it, this myth has two tragedies, both involving loss, the second one more poignant than the first because of the chance at retrieval lost. It is one thing to lose something precious; and it is quite another, heavier, realer t...

I am again  in Manila. The packers emptied my apartment, and because this is how things go here, I had a beer with them when all was done. One of them slit his leg on a beer bottle by accident. The blood was dark over the concrete floor, and I noticed he was bleeding maroon and was afraid the shard cut a vein. I bound the gash, knowing that it needed stitches, knowing that there's only so much blood a body could lose, knowing that the gash might be infected, knowing that he won't have it stitched no matter what I say. This is sometimes how things go here as well. Maybe it will heal on its own. Now I am here in the apartment in the capital, briefly wondered about that boy's wound and then forgot about it for all the shit that I need to move in. Anyone familiar to packing up is privy to the sheer saturating feeling of looking at a mess of boxes and bags and the near-detritus that make up their lives, and of how to reorder these so as to resemble a sense of sense. I looked...

A date. Colloquially referring to a time, perhaps for a meeting, or a date. It is also a space. The thing with online shit is that it fragments space from time.  You do talk in real time, but the distance is a motherfucker. Both of you acknowledge that, either implicitly or explicitly, it is there. Some sort of intensity, or at least constancy, has to be there to make it work. However, there is also a constant danger to constancy, for it makes you hope. That is one step away from the realm of demand. But due to the nature of your communication, can you even make demands? How? Your connection started with an originary chasm which cannot be filled unless the fragmentation becomes erased, as stated, by either intense commitment or moving. This fragmentation of space and time cannot be sustainable unless by fortitude from both ends which makes both of you consciously and deliberately and continually address this fragmentation. It's exhausting, it has to be. Distance is a motherfu...

How gentle, this thing was Like the breath of a butterfly dreaming (Do butterflies breathe? Do they dream?) As though there was nothing there, But I felt its gossamer touch nonetheless. Like delicate wings barely having touched skin. It made me not want to grip, And have shields made of flowers. Maybe I had too large a hand, For such a faint thing to bear being on. Maybe it awoke from a dream, A dream of a man in the ancient East, Or it was dreaming of humans. No matter. This butterfly also made me dream. No matter what awoke from both dreams, My shields are now stones.

I thought it was absurd that I was having breakfast at 12:00 midnight, having had drank and slept by 6:00 PM. But in hindsight I'm glad I did, because had I not done that I would not have had one beautiful moment in the intersection when I was in a cab on my way to a co-working space at 2:00 AM. Let me back up. I wanted to remember that moment  this morning where I truly was calm in letting things be, where a rose is a rose is a rose. I want to remember it. I want to remember it. I want to remember it. It was a moment with no hope or agenda, no ideation nor devaluation, no frenetic attempt to declare detachment or avoid abandonment, nothing but a moment that is. Let me back up further. There's a wise and incisive  article  about detaching, and as I was reading I was half agreeing with it and half poised to offer a counter. The counter would involve a lot of explaining as to what my issues are, and I'm too lazy to do that, but go ahead and read the article. It's...

In Derrida's Living On  and Pratchett's Feet of Clay , we see a minor theme, one of visibility being rendered by something that is not visible. This paradox is a true paradox in the sense that its contradiction is one of necessity: that which renders the possibility of sight should in itself not be seen, lest one incite madness. In Derrida, this madness is being blinded in seeing the light; in Pratchett, this madness is being poisoned by the fumes of a candle. One does not see the light; one sees by it. Seeing the light is a sort of death or madness. For there is a madness to absolute visibility rendered by seeing that which itself renders visibility, it is the ultimate disrespect to sight itself, for it is absolute definition. It is an Ouroboros having completely eaten itself, or having opened the box with the crowbar inside it. Or having successfully bitten teeth. Any enterprise that seeks truth (and which enterprise does not?) runs the risk of this madness, philosophy mor...

By definition, "To define" is "to limit," de finitio , "make finite." So gentle, this thing, I will hesitate to define it with a box that will suffocate it, So gentle this thing, I cannot draw limits to it, and arrest it to one thing. And so gentle this thing, it makes a sound so slight, like a heart breaking forever. So gentle this thing, I cannot bear to listen as if it was my own heart breaking, So gentle this thing, I might not be able to bear it. For I may be the only one bearing it, As defined.

How paradoxical that To be able to live You need to be dead to the world And the world dead to you Each and every night How paradoxical that To be you You need that which is not you And that which is not you to be not the same as you Each and every day How true that To be You need the other in both sleeping and waking Who will be dead to you in sleeping And other to you in waking Each and every time

So gentle, this thing, Like the breath of a butterfly dreaming, (Do butterflies breathe? Dream?) As though it isn’t really there, And all the more so felt for it. So gentle, this thing, My hands do not know what they’re holding, Only that if I grasp even the slightest, It will go away. It makes me have shields made of flowers.

There is a 3:14:16 file that exists in the world which compiles all the meat of every interview ever given by Terence McKenna, who is a philosopher, a mystic, a shroom head, a shamanist, a Jungian, and, if I remember correctly, an ethnobiologist.  He offers what on the surface seem to be coherent arguments for the reasons why we are fascinated with aliens and why mushrooms are, from the point of view of biological design, the most cogent shape for the UFO. You had to take everything he says with a grain of salt if not for his sharp wit which renders everything he says apt to justifiable skepticism from your part, although, again, he has moments of brilliance, as in It's almost as though Western science was fascinated by energy. For 5,000 years, we pursued understanding energy. And this process ends with thermonuclear explosions in the deserts of the American Southwest. We can light the fire that burns in the heart of the distant stars. We know how to do that. That's what the ...

I just came from my sister's and from Manila and straight back to Baguio. I attended a lecture there, and talked with my adviser about my dissertation, scholarship application, therapy, and a lot of other helpful things to my head. I've been meaning to wrap words around things I see whenever I'm traveling via bus by daytime, or walking around places - which I rarely do - since I'd rather be at  home and work and read and other helpful and not so helpful things to my head.  There was a time when I walked five kilometers on the highway from Naguilian to Bauang, looking for a field of white reeds beyond the gap between two houses I saw a fleeting glimpse of on my way to San Fernando the day before. With nothing to do the day after, I set out to look for the field and take a picture. The road was winding and dusty, and of course I had white sneakers on. I was awful to my shoes that day, but it was worth it.  I saw fields of green almost yellow for the ripeness of crop...

by Takahiro might be one of the most masterfully executed things I have seen in a while (although it's presently ranked at 794th place by myanimelist), not in the least because of its airtight ostentation of multi-level themes. It's a brilliant piece on how seeming contraries are actually contaminated by each other, such that in the end these contraries are deconstructively shown to necessarily feed off of each other, such that in the end there is no basis for simple or selfsame valuations whatsoever .  (Yes, I just Derrida'd the thing. Fuck me.) The characters are well-developed throughout its 24 episodes (but the soundtracks were hiccupy, at least to my ears. But what do I know, I'm not a connoisseur of Japanese pop). Leaving you to discover the plot for yourself, the anime explores a whole host of socio-political (hence moral) and existential arguments, utilizing almost all of the battles between the characters as metaphors for a specific (but always multi-layere...

Mt. Masungi , if you're too lazy to click that link, is a georeserve consisting of a limestone mountain range. Touring the entire thing will occupy the better part of your day, and getting there will occupy the rest, if you're going to come from nowhere near the Philippine National Capital Region area. If you want to prove to yourself that you have some sense of self-worth in the world and are, contrary to popular opinion, not just a waste of space and carbohydrates, please, go. (And complete the trail, that is.) You will have to cross these bridges, among many other activities that would cumulatively make you wish you were a better person. Or that your carbohydrates weren't so cowardly. And if you did cross them (or think that there's nothing to it since you're not afraid of heights anyway), then give yourself a fucking medal, sir, for... Whatever that accomplishment is.  Me , personally? Hell. I seemed to have developed a fear of heights when I was younger a...

It is in silence - with alcohol, if you like - that the heart itself is heard. You can take a baseball bat to a picture frame until all you end up with are shards; you can burn everything of physical memory until all you end up with is smoke; you can erase a line on the wall where his height would have reached until all you end up with is a spotless wall; you can go abuse a punching bag until all you end up with are bruises; you can even exhaust an entire day with your best friend who wrenched a sob from your throat rawer than you ever thought it capable, by saying, "He doesn't see who you are." Just a sob. This loss is too big for crying, for swinging bats, for burning things, for wiping walls, for punching shit, for words - of which you had so many - and of which he had more, before he had none. You can pick up every single sliver of glass one by one and momentarily marvel at how people in the movies are idiots for always drawing blood while doing this. You can end ...

I am not given to envy - because that requires higher-order emotions I have not been capable of for a while - but I find myself somehow envying the tenant next door. He's been singing his heart out in front of God and everybody for four hours. I doubt if he even knew that it had been four hours. The building we live at - this tenant and I, along with several others -  has architecture that, if I am being kind, can only be described as "modern, if by 'modern' you mean something imagined by a blind person who happened to overhear a conversation about architecture several tables away." No offense to the blind. This building is a box. Not an aesthetic box, just a box. The walls have some sort of sound-proofing, but if anyone held a conversation higher than 0.2 decibels in the hallways it would be transmitted at ten within your ears seven units away. I have had a security guard knock on my door at 1:00 in the morning because I had my best friend and her boyfriend at ...

It's the little things that save us from the abyss. A memory, a smile or a moment of honesty and humanity in an interview that seems to be going bad, a deep breath in precisely the moment when you can't, a thought that sustains us against how life, like a bad wife, batters us. I remember my nephew when he was small. My sister had to go somewhere that day, and so she rose at dawn and asked me to lay down beside him so he wouldn't be alarmed when he woke up. I did. He was. Though it was still too dark out to see, upon waking he took a look at my face, watching him with a small smile, watching this little human being that took a C-section after 10+ hours of my sister's labor, and he wailed and wailed and wailed. I wasn't his mother. I didn't smell like her, nor look like her, nor wasn't her. I tried calming him down, practicing the hold I finally had the guts to do at the hospital when he was born - 6 hours after he was born - I was so afraid to touch ...

The mayflies on my window become an astounding litter of corpses once the afternoon rolls in. I do not even bother with a newspaper, I just kill them with my hands, leaving wet smudges on my window and underneath my fingernails, what passes for their blood thoughtlessly wiped on a cigarette, or a glass of wine just as carelessly drunk. Sometimes these things bang themselves against the pane, sometimes the live ones try to mate with the corpses of their kind lying dead on the sill. Or sometimes they would even mate in the air, becoming cumbersome, heavy, weighed down by each other. They are easier to kill that way - I do not have to summon the patience or the hand-eye coordination it takes to follow them until they are still enough to kill. Though wherever their flight or libido takes them I stand outside, massive and heavy like a god, and crush them just as unheeding as they are of the death that awaits them as evinced by what they are trying to mate with. I don't even know if t...