Yes, I’d like to cook pasta for you
When you asked me a long time ago what I would like to eat when we go out on a date, I said I love to eat pasta. You know why I chose it? I’ll tell you why…
It has been a rule in dating (and I’ve read it…) never to order pasta on a date. Why you might ask. Understandbly, it is rather quite difficult to eat if you don’t know the proper way as what my friend Sonia would say.
I remember observing the way Sonia would eat pasta. She doesn’t cut her pasta. She doesn’t slurp her pasta. And most importantly, she doesn’t toss or mix her pasta. She would also give instructions. She would tell us that if you’re a right-handed person, you have to hold your spoon using your left hand and hold the fork using your right. Scoop the pasta up using the fork and on the spoon, twirl it. The angle of the spoon should be sideways so that the pasta would completely wrap onto the fork (See? the telling alone is quite tedious!). You will never catch her disregarding her table manners and etiquette. Only very close friends would know and see.
So do you see why I like to eat pasta? I want you to know me. I want you to see me cut my pasta, slurp it if it’s long, or mix the sauce with the noodles. I want you to see how complicated a person I am. If you don’t like what you see, then go. But if you do, I’d like to cook a pasta for you, and see you eat it too.
praevalet illicita by Karen Pioquinto
perhaps, it now comes to me, that was the attraction of it. the off-kiltered sense of predestiny that circled this chipped idea made whole by cups of adventure we offered each other those few fleeting times. it is likely that the keenness was heightened by favors filched from trusted confidants and by the lightheadedness that comes from defiance. the likelihood made me cringe-- now, only pinpricks remain. what is no longer forbidden
quickly loses its charm.
“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.”
- Anne Frank
(via forestmilk)
Conversation
“I’ll never love again…”
“just words… you’ll never stop falling.”
_______________
The world has given and it has taken more and more from me. So i’d like to live and let myself be and remove these lingering thoughts in my head – to run as freely and breathe the worries confining and fettering me. I’d like to cast-off every shadows enfolding my sanity - and get a glimpse of love and of life and simply of eternity.
So if you see me wandering off to a far and distant land, know that my journey is just starting. Don’t turn away but stay for awhile and I will tell you of accountings from a far away place in a far away time when the world is just remembering – how innocent, how pure and sweet everything can be.
Tell this seeker, this wanderer because I’m all the more yearning to find a home for this lonely soul, a home I can find solace. The world has given but it has taken more and more from me.
_________________
“home, I’ll never find home…”
“where your heart is… it is home.”
Walk by Your Side by Angel
It doesn’t matter anyway because people have a way with dreaming and believing and inventing words like forever that seem to liberate us from a brief existence that begins to count down the moment we’re born and only stops short at the first kiss of the same short lived romance. It doesn’t matter because we could always romanticize. Even the most concrete science of matter and antimatter annihilating each other at the first minutes of the universe to a battle between good and evil. Or your past life that could actually exist withyou simultaneously were you once an evening star at that corner of the sky. Tonight as you look up and look back in time. Or when you look for something that lasts. Like timeless myths you’ll always hear like a voice in the sweetest tune crystallized in your memory. Or poems that transcend all the world’s time. All that’s left to remind you of the more basic themes of the same ageold romance. And yet the same verses of much the same lives. I thought that this would be a lifelong promise-to always write something beautiful. Always in the end something beautiful. But there is a kind of story no one in the world should ever write about that it would be better if there had not been any story at all. Then at least the world would be spared of the saddest ending ever told. Like a kind of hurt that no one on Earth should ever be allowed to feel. A kind of hurt I feel that seems to stay the way a rainy evening that broke into a stormy night lasts longer than it should. The way tales would sometimes be helplessly engulfed in a dense turbulent vapor of every other unwilling fleeting tales pleading to be remembered and immortalized. Like half written stories, I search for redemption, grudgingly coming up with the same wrong spaces between old lines and phrases. With only the unnecessary heavy baggage of the deepest yearning for something truer, purer. Only too wide awake trying to fill a nameless void by reading far more hopeful promises into nothing more than what is plainly and justly written. Struggling with a needless insecurity attack. Of things that are meant to liberate you could actually be the things that would cage you in. Fighting an all too proud and jaded stubborn assertion in a mind that prompts me to believe that what I sought long after is only a concept. Just a concept, more like some cliché everybody else required out of mandatory existence: a savior every other soul all asks of his most transient stay, a redeemer every other soul is intensely aching for. Like a long aimless prose, I long for a little more faith. For a little more conviction. For a little more resolution. Not for the same circumstantial randomness. Because the skies hold their mysteries but they don’t play the game of chance. As I look for an answer. For a drug, a therapy, a prayer. A ticket for a one-way two-thirty a.m. trip out of a self-imposed soliloquy. Because redemption seems a little too far off, refusing to give itself away like some satirical cosmic fireworks with a simple roll of a mechanical dice. Like an all too sickening sinusoidal wave of juvenile laughter and anxiety. Like the way the dance of quantum fluctuations make weather and conspire with vengeful jealous storms, building them in a kind of rage I could sometimes feel coming from me as suddenly as it dies out one early morning in July. One early morning in July. Only to wake up in the daybreak suddenly, purposely with a God that laughs, a God that smiles, a God whose eyes gently speak. A God that has put me in places to meet different faces as I lived through emotions of love and hate and hurt and joy until I began to acknowledge that he was always and as always been behind all the stories of my life and of every other’ s life story as well. A God that would carry me back home when I wander off the track even by two paces apart and would never tire of doing this again and again and again until I ultimately learn. A God that I could always try to run away from only to stop when I find out that all roads lead back to him after all. A God so real, asking me to heed his call if I’d only recognize, if I’d only admit the need, if I’d only accept, if I’d only allow my heart to be little bit more yielding so I could let myself believe once more In a God that actually sits down next to me only to talk, to listen, to understand. A God that would offer me his shoulder as I turn to look for him when all the world dissolves. A God that identifies with human pain and knows exactly what human weakness meant when I find myself standing before him as I bow my head meekly, too weary and defeated. As I struggle with vanishing defenses. As I strain from the first tear that threatens to fall and trickle down. As I surrender my hand to a God that would ask me what’s wrong and would later tell me why it’s wrong. A God that doesn’t necessarily halt the world when I wanted it to cease but provides me with the warmest refuge when I’m too tired to carry on. A God that doesn’t automatically grant me all the answers to all of my questions but calms my agitated soul and gives my mind peace. A God that would exactly point out to me what moving mountains actually are only to show the world clearer, almost for the first time. A God like one early morning in July like one summer solstice in a provincial home where I could taste the first light of day in a humble breakfast. A God that broke the spell of last night’s most turbulent thunderstorm. Because I asked-honestly, deliberately, painfully-only to realize, to shed a little bit extra pride and layers, to be a little bit more willing to be directed, to give away some things even if they were thought to be the best things in life, to be a little bit more humane to say a modest prayer To a God that doesn’t only summon the four forces of nature to stop, to persist, to freeze but to a God with a face so kind and near unlike the impersonal primal cause of all there is. A God that couldn’t only run the whole universe backward in time but a God I’d never expect to be working in the most silent and anonymous life, to be seen and heard in the gentlest of tones, to be deeply ingrained in circumstances of synchronicities, to be involved in the simplest most humble drop of morning dew on a leaf. And a God that was born only to die on the cross for me. . . . . It doesn’t matter how many hours since it began to rain last night. Seconds don’t matter when you think about forever. Not even minutes. Not even years. While the night could be so quiet without the sound of water rushing out of the sky. The way life could be so short without the word forever. It wouldn’t be as striking as the constellations we’d greet as easily as we’d leave them behind continuing, living, outlasting, withholding. It wouldn’t be as beautiful and purposeful without a redeemer in life. I had just become a Christian. Lord, I must have set foot in the most unchartered land because each encounter and every life is filled with so much meaning, so much purpose, so much beauty beyond phrases and figures known. That I could write a thousand poems, a thousand lines, a thousand songs until I run out of words and all the world dissolves but still nothing comes close. And nothing would ever come close to your name or to everything you are and to everything else that you mean and would still mean to me. That I would leave a plea by the heaven’s doorstep only so I could lift up my life, offer all I am and all that I have and then again more if there’s anything more, if there’s anything else I could give to you if you’d only take my hand again. Because this is everything I would have myself live for. And all I would pray to ask for in all of my lifetime is only to let you have me walk by your side.
Paper art by Aoyama Hina
Imagine the focus and steadiness of hand that it must take in order to create such tiny paper cut-outs by hand. Japanese-born, France-based artist Aoyama Hina captures an incredible amount of detail in flowing script and the cells of a butterfly’s wing.
Check out more of her art here
DEAD STARS (for Paz Marquez Benitez) by H.O. Santos
If I still think of her today Why didn't I tell her long ago? I could have saved all wondering For I'd have peace if I did know.
If I had learned of metaphors Before I wondered 'bout the stars Would I have written verses then And worshipped Venus instead of Mars?
If I had found my tongue could rhyme Would I have shown a face sans mask, A heart unsure? But woe is me-- I'll never know, I didn't ask.
Any Woman Speaks (By A.M. Gloria)
Half of the world's true glamour
Is held--you know by whom?
Not by the gilt Four Hundred
Parading in perfume,
Nor by the silvered meteors
That light the celluloid sky--
But by these eyes that called you,
Blind fool who passed me by!
Three Words by Caravaggio
One of my favorite readings contributed by Caravaggio from the column “In a Rage” in Peyups.com
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The three words that mean the most aren’t “I love you”, with its history of being an accomplice to lies, with its bad reputation as a myth. What is “I love you” but the easy way out, the secret weapon revealed at the ends of long-drawn battles between desperation and despair? “I love you” is what you say when you run out of valid arguments but decide to keep fighting anyway. “I love you” is what you use when you want to appear to be someone you’re not. These are powerful words, powerful in the way that politicians and generals are nowadays, worth their weight in gold. “I love you” has been the pillar of empires and friendships, and their causes for downfall. “I love you” is where you build the tower of your trust, only to see it crumble down when these words are said to someone else. “I love you” is what you use when you want to be unfair, when you want to deliberately hurt. “I love you” throws the whole equation in chaos, unbalances the seesaw. It implies the loss of reason and pride, but is used to manipulate, to blackmail, leaving behind disillusionment and disappointment.
The three words that mean the most aren’t “I want you”, with its raw, blatant inconsideration, its implications of a primal need that is best released orgasmically. “I want you” is what spoiled brats say, it’s what selfish bitches say, it’s what horny boys say. “I want you” is harsh, said through clenched teeth, said with wild eyes. “I want you” is a physical sentence, the amalgamation of skin against a number of factors: skin on skin, fingernail on skin, teeth on skin. It is violent and rapid, a whirlwind of emotion, an explosion of saliva and other bodily fluids. These are words that have no origin, they emerge from the basest of instincts, they are triggered by smell, by touch, by the look of rawness in another person’s eyes. These are words that signal the coming of a storm, and like most storms, they wreak havoc and then depart, leaving behind ruin and wounds.
The three words that mean the most aren’t “I need you”, with its childish, clingy implications, its sad, pathetic grievances. “I need you” leaves you open, blinding you to yourself, eradicating all traces of self-respect. “I need you” is the dying breath of a failed relationship. It is the battlecry of an overpowered suitor. These words signal the clinging to memories that are either long gone, or never were. These words bypass true necessity to make fools out of the sayers. These are not words to be used by all; it takes the strongest persons to relay this message correctly. Otherwise all is naught, you only reveal yourself as an empty shell craving for something, anything, to fill it. But then, the strongest persons never have the need to say these words. It’s the irony of life. These words are like taking a knife to your throat and piercing your skin gently, leaving behind a trail of blood too thin for anyone to see, but painful enough for you to feel.
The three words that mean the most, I think, the ones that really hit the mark, and often in the most unexpected of ways, are “I miss you”. This is the sentence that sends the message right home. Because what other message is there? Nothing else, except exactly just that, “I miss you”, and everything else is pulled along into it, like a chain reaction. Unlike “I love you” and the lies that go along with it, “I miss you” is honest and sincere, you only say it when you mean it, and you don’t have to mean it in a big way to really mean it. Unlike “I want you” and its expectations, “I miss you” offers all it has, and waits for nothing in return. Unlike “I need you” and its desperate whines, “I miss you” stands on its own, a whole entity in just three words, devoid of arms that cling to you for life.
“I miss you” means everything and nothing, it is unflinching and honest. It is upbeat and simple, with wisps of longing and clouds of hope. You miss people you used to love, people you used to want, people you used to need. But most of the time the missing is all that’s left, and that’s OK, there’s nothing else you’d change. The missing implies a past that remains in its rightful place. Or it implies the reality and possibilities of the present. It is hope and love and lust and peace all at the same time. Some people say that when they met that person, it was akin to “coming home”. And missing is this manifestation of home-sickness, the way people return to their homelands to die, the way all the comfort the world has to offer is nothing compared to the feeling of being in someone’s arms.
And that’s why I miss you, because you’re not here, and because every time I think about you, that’s all that I think. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you, and the world turns for both of us, and I can’t wait until you come home.
