Strange How Things Come In Place

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I woke up late for work last Wednesday. Well, not really THAT late, I had enough time to get out of the house fully-clothed and dignified enough to go to the office. I grab my keys and rushed the stairs toward the door and tried to open the lock. The key wouldn't work! I twisted and turned the damn thing and still it wouldn't work. I twisted and twisted until finally, the key broke and the tip got stuck inside the keyhole. Swell ...

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I call my direct supervisor to tell him I got locked in the apartment and couldn't get out, that I would probably have to destroy the lock just to get out. He told me since I only have half a day's worth of sick leave, I should take an emergency leave credit provided I submit to him a medical certificate of a family member being rushed to a hospital or something to that degree. It helps to be nice to your supervisors. So I called my Mom to tell her her son is held in custody by an indoor lock that couldn't be opened from the outside. By lunch time, everything began to normalize. In a strange way, things happened as if I wasn't meant to leave the house that morning. My Mom was able to arrange something with my uncle who's a doctor, to get a medical certificate. I was able to open the lock with the CORRECT key, after talking to the landlord from behind closed doors, and I was meeting up with a friend for dinner after several attempts at finalizing an appointment. It was ironic that the key I was looking for had been dangling right below the lock itself. Such an accurate metaphor about my current state of affairs.

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I feel like there's something I'm not seeing. It's dangling in front of me but I just don't see it. I'm hoping the Saturday tarot reading my roomie and his friend are doing would help enlighten me a bit.

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Dinner was okay and my friend wanted to see the apartment. So while we were there, I called in an officemate to join us because I missed her company. We talked, smoked a few cigs, and laughed ourselves through stories of love and relationship preferences up until around 4 in the morning. It was fun indeed and I plan to invite more people when my room mate's not around! Hahahahahaha

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How strange though that my officemate lives in the same area down south as my friend. It was like I was meant to invite them both that night not just because they live in the same area, but more so because they're sooo alike.

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.... So today officially marks 1 whole week of staying in the apartment. How has it been? It's been wonderful. My savings hurts, but it's worth it. I'm starving like an Überwaif, but it's been worth losing weight over. If freedom had lips to eat me with, I'd have 3 hickey marks on my neck: 1 near my left collarbone and 2 on my nape. Strange how things get into place.

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Elements That Make A House

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I've officially moved out last Saturday, November 19. The sound of it still resonates in my mind with much finality, stark and powerful like a last sentence. It's only been 3 days and 2 nights and I feel like a stranger in a new land. Nevermind that most of my material belongings already crossed over from the other side. In the silence of my new room, I begin yet another exodus in the desert of my thoughts.

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The room had been cleaned up and painfully waxed, the cabinets and walls meticulously purified with scented bleach and water, the folding bed steadily erect and ready to sleep with its new owner; the owner, lost in his own thoughts trying to decipher when to start unloading his burden and where he'll shelve new memories. Like always, the room itself had no unsolicited advice, no recreative words of comfort for a traveller who has settled into a new abode. Soul food would and always be scarce from now on.

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I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor. Christmas had invaded the house with its bells and snowflakes, the dark like a silent Santa secretly combing the naughty and the nice. I had been naughty that night and chose to spend it somewhere else. Again I am filled with ambivalence. Regret and exhilaration make an awful prancing pair, a dance of equals on a conflicted mind. I hardly remember the first night I spent sleeping on the floor, for it had been daybreak the time I had set the alarms for work.

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Last night was different. I came home with my roommate still awake. He had been painting the eyes of Shiva with a saucerful of orange sandalwood paste. The plastic table bore witness to pagan accessories. I forget their names. In my mind, I'd always be a Christian however non-affiliated I claim to be. It takes much to believe in God, much more to believe in oneself.

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We started by him asking me why I had been avoiding him. I told him I hadn't been however truthful I claimed to be. After cleaning his brass lamps and incense burners, he started to tune his sitar. He told me sek-tar literally meant "3 strings" but the musical instrument he cradled on his shoulder had 21.

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It was a painful process tuning it. By the time I had closed my eyes in the middle of a classical Indian sonnet, he cut his finger with one of the tweaked wires. He said, "a sitar player is not allowed to lift his finger from the strings." He then asked me what instrument I played, to which I replied the piano. The lost pieces flooded my mind yet again. Feelings of regret, songs of exhilaration, listening to intuition, sound advice and all the other things I felt I wasn't patiently hearing. He cut his finger, then he proceeded to play again, as if the pain of starting over after 3 months meant nothing to him. A true musician is determined to perfect his art. My thoughts were lost in the dim yellow of the room. At least that's how I remember it.

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I got to finish my coffee and decided I've had enough cigarettes for the day. Daybreak had arrived and the tide of elements -- thoughts, music, coffee, stories -- that had come to make the house that night, quietly drifted with me to sleep.

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The Dance of Equals

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The days when my feet would swell
and my tenderness entwines with the air
are over.
We would dance like equals high on abandonment
amused by the languor of desires
spoken fluently by warm bodies.
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I tiptoe gently and with grace to avoid your sidesteps,
backpedalling, retracing regret like crumbs to a trail.
My shoes are earth that grow grass and grapes
each finger pressing for wine, red and sour and aromatic,
both hands drawn like age to a relic
kneading soil and crumbs with acceding passion.
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Not once would a side glance
come my way from you, as if I'd ignore the vines
growing on your arms like veins in this tight embrace.
Not once would a sampling of breath
caress the neediness on my cheek, as if I'd ignore the collar
of sweat gliding handsomely on your neck,
our angst like bees sinfully attracted to sweetness,
attracted to this force, this denudity.
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The days pass and a dry spell later,
the dance of equals simmers,
foot upon foot of unweighted desire tumbling each other over
on the ground beneath my feet.
I keep myself awake
for the leaves, not the cold nor intimacy,
dowses the water on my skin, impersonates
the strolling of clouds or the swift breeze
that flagellates on my cheek like the pain of your passing.
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There is hope in the yellow morning
a death embraced by the light,
a darkness that beleaguers the dance of equals,
the sunrise that evokes
a slow and torturous eroticism.
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