I want you to stare

 

On the Road to Sister's heart

I travelled all the way from comfort zone to the strange land of Circe. No one could turn me into a pig, though. It was still January and the sun refused to appear in the horizon, so everything that I planned got canceled and set to an indefinite date in the future.

Trying very hard to heal

 I believe that a dip in seawater will heal me. You are not allowed to disagree.

Just a word of welcome

K asked, "So, what did you have for the New Year?" 

I knotted my brows because suddenly I can't  remember.  Take note that he said, "what did you have," not "what did you do" for the NY; which made me ask, "Is he being more materialistic?"

To focus on "having" and not on the "doing?" or perhaps, on the "feeling?" Is that what he got from communing more with his father's part of the family? Or, maybe, even with my other part of the family? Sometimes, I get the feeling that he is discarding me. 

"I can't remember because you were not there," I said as a way of explaining. He nodded. He belted another song. Belted. Finally, I found the word. He had learned how to belt a song without my knowing it. The first time that I heard him scaling the notes so well, I said, "Wow. Now I finally knew why it took you so long to finish Architecture." I paused, looking at his face for effect, before saying, "I think you went to another class, the videoke class." He laughed. "You're doing so well now that we can finally say we are a real Filipino family: we sing the videoke.  Ja and Sean - and perhaps JL, too - laughed. Ja took the microphone, which we brought all the way from home. The videoke staff had to agree when I said we had to bring our own microphone as part of our anti-COVID-19 measure. I simply needed to make sure because no one was certain yet whether or not we were already out of the pandemic. Ja filed at least five songs. He was having a concert. I was worried the rest of the company--all young people--might get bored.  Sean said it was okay.  Happy New Year!

 

I can't write

Ja went with me to the Island Garden City (where was the garden? where was the city?) because I was feeling really bad that day because of the news that I got from home that was no longer home for me.  We ended up taking a boat--because Ja had a mind of his own and his idea was totally different from my own. So, instead of getting relaxed just like the way you see it in the movies, I was so tense and grumpy because we had to go through the midday traffic, we had to line up at the tiny seven eleven to bring something to eat, we had to line up to get the tickets and when we did, we had to sandwich ourselves in between passengers in the fully-loaded boat. Then, I had to count how many life jackets there were above our heads because I always remember the stories that I edited about boats crossing over stormy waters.  There was nothing stormy about the sea, though. The storm was right inside me.

 

Cup Sawi

 

Energy landscape

Solar PV panels mounted on the rooftops of Ateneo de Davao University are changing the Davao city landscape and hopefully, the energy future of Mindanao.

 

Mirrors

Almost a decade after they installed the first solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the rooftops of the university buildings, engineers at the Ateneo de Davao University explore tapping another power from the sun: heat captured in this parabolic dish of the concentrated solar thermal power facility in Bangkal campus. Unlike PV cell that converts light into electricity, CSP uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight into its receiver to produce heat--which is then used to spin a turbine or power an engine to generate electricity. 

Harvesting the Sun

I was about to say, "Hey, do you have the feet of a butiki? Whatever happens to you will be my responsibility," but I knew he wouldn't listen, I knew how hard headed they all are, and I was thinking, not only of him but them, in general. I would only sound like a helpless schoolmarm, a subject of future conversations. And so, I restrained myself; I just stared and stayed there, taking photos.

Sikwate and Puto Maya

Two nights without getting a wink of sleep and I lapsed into a trance.  I loved it. I was stripped of all animal emotions (except fear and panic, which was what brought me to that state in the first place), but all in all, I was capable only of that and the higher emotions of love and longing for God to come and rescue me from my deadlines.  On the second day, when I finally saw the glimpse of a read back before the break of dawn, in between the unholy hours before the cock's crowing, I dragged Ja to the Bankerohan public market, where we had a hearty breakfast of sikwate and puto maya. 

What my desk looked like in November

 

I'll tell you all about it

 

But not tonight. Tonight, I still have to read, I still have to write, I still have to clean my copy of verbal flabs, garbage; I still have to clean my desk, I still have to untangle the tangled threads of my earphone. Threads because I could not remember the right word for it. I'm running out of words nowadays. Maybe, one day, I'll remember. I failed to take the picture of that tall ugly woman in a brown dress and with a bun hair-do, who thought she was young and pretty and she owned the world because she was a Filipina working for the Polish Embassy.