in retrospect

everyone is so into blogging nowadays... (or parang huling huli na ko sa observation na to! hmmm)... every time i visit my blog, i have this urge to write something just to keep it updated... kahit wala akong masulat o di ko feel magsulat, parang kailangan kung may isulat sa blog! pero always panalo ang wala akong sinusulat... tamad lang siguro talaga ako! hehehe... but it's a different tune this time... visiting my blog today makes me want to post something even if i don't know what to write or i don't even feel like writing. iba ung gusto kong mag-post ng something but at the same time i don't feel like writing... hehehe...

anyways, i'm tempted to write about the year 2005 in relation to me! ang daming nangyari sa buhay ko this year that a single blog entry about it would take at least a day and of course will exhaust me to death! hahaha... but since the year hasn't ended pa, i'll defer my storytelling until december 31... or better yet on my birthday, january 1. para may konting drama drama sa entry na yun... best actress kasi ako lagi pag birthday ko kaya better on that day ko na isulat ang aking "in retrospect".

at malay din natin, baka mas maging eventful ang aking buhay this december... baka magkaron ako ng boyfriend na so obsessed with me!!! as i told my friends, sa dinadami-dami ng nangyari sa kin this year, boyfriend na lang ang kulang para kumpleto na ang casting sa drama ng buhay ko!

o sya! ang daldal ko na! baka maisulat ko pa ngayon ang aking lifestory in the year 2005...

to him who must not be named

i am a seafarer
in the vast ocean
of your eyes

i search for
even the tiniest isle
to claim my own

i transfix my eyes
upon some glint of land
in your gaze

yet i am washed away
by the waves of your
eluding glance

i am once again
lost, drifting in the vastness
of your faraway look

your eyes speak
nothing for me
not even the tiniest love

singapura

singapuuura singapuuuraaaaa.... a parrot sang during the "all star bird show" at jurong bird park in singapore... hmmm, i think singapura means singapore... duh siguro ako! hehehe

i went to singapore during the halloween holidays with the other ex-vicon people (just add C and T to ex-vicon, interpolate the letters, and you'll find out who we really are! kidding). the jurong bird park was my pinakapaboritong napuntahan. i enjoyed watching shows such as parrots singing, in an operatic pitch, singapura and my bonnie lies over the ocean. i especially enjoyed feeding the birds with live worms! the night safari was also one thing which i enjoyed very much. i kinda felt like belonged there, in that zoo. but not that i'd be one of those animals there, mind you. i felt like i could be one of the staffs there riding in the tram to entertain people while they observe the animals in their "natural" habitat. it's amazing how giraffes, elephants, tigers, lions, deers, anteaters, and hyenas have been living in an territory where their actual habitat were somehow replicated. anyways, there's no more fun, though, being there than being with the company of my vicon friends. i got to see (after a long while) sue, my ever beauteous friend, again. it was fun being with her, her beau johnx, rache, audie, raki, lennard, benjie, noemi, lawrence, radwin, and joe! special thanks to sue, johnx, and bendz for being our gracious hosts and tour guides!

singapore is a very nice place. walang pollution. kahit daanan ka pa sa harap mo ng mga bus nila at hinga ka ng malalim, fresh air pa rin! amazing! hehehe... it's just hot there. well, it being a country near the equator. and isa ko lang concern is masyadong maraming matatapang ang "natural body perfume" ng mga nandun who are of different nationalities! hehehe.. but after 4 days yata, i got used to it na rin (like sue hehehe). si sue kaya nya nang higupin ang amoy sa bus at mrt. hehehe

anyways, i read in ria's blog that she finds singapore a romantic place. yup for one (or two) there's clark quay and boat quay (pronounced as key - ganun pala yun??? kala ko talaga kwey). but other than it being romantic, it's a good place to work for people in the IT field! dun ang mga pinoy naka-condo with all amenities u can imagine! pool, gym, tennis court, basketball court, parang country na ang mga condo! mabubuhay ka na dun na di lumalabas!

hmmm, all in all, the living conditions there are very good. plenty of opportunities. and from time to time you still get to see some cuties despite my initial remarks when i arrived there na walang guapo!!! hehehe. makes me wanna go there, work, and try out the place for at least three months. and why not? :p

losing control

i used to believe that we can be in control of our life... but there are just times when one just can't, not even one's thoughts and emotions... no matter how i try to rationalize and invite positive vibes, there are always times when negativity takes over and everything -- thoughts and emotions -- just gets out of CONTROL! arrrggghhhh!!!

roland

i miss roland!

we've been emailing back and forth for almost a year now but suddenly it stopped sometime last month due to my sulking and mulling mood. i still thought of him from time to time, though, wondering how he's doing with his own musings. fortunately, i saw the news last sunday about the earthquake that happened in tokyo. the news shook me out of my hermitage and prompted me to email him yesterday. whew! glad he's doing ok! :) and i'm even gladder that he's going out with someone! (sorry guys, girls and girlalous... this handsome guy is going out with someone! well, simply because i'm not there... hahaha) :p

i miss him all right but i dreamt of a different roland last night! :p it was funny but sultry, nonetheless! hahaha. but that should be a different story! behave emman! :p

anyways, i'm glad this special friend of mine is always there for me. he listens, or rather, reads to all my rants no matter how confusing and bitter i get sometimes. and he tells me almost everything about himself. i even make him upset sometimes but he forgives me all the time... every time... i'm lucky, right? having a handsome friend who answers my emails right away! hehehe

well, see you soon my dear sir! i'm sure you miss me too! hahaha ;)

planting trees

"the SECOND best time to plant a tree that should have been planted 10 years ago is NOW"

i'm not sure if i got it right but it's pretty much IT how i remembered that quote. although, we all have in our systems the wisdom that we can make up for lost time in pursuing our dreams, we still, almost always, remain rooted to where we are. yesterday lost is always lost but we have today to make up for it, don't we? so what if we're too old to pursue what we should have pursued 10 years ago? so what if others don't agree with the leaps we're going to take? so what if there are risks?

so what are we waiting for?

so what am i waiting for?

ahhhh, but i'm almost there... swear!!! :)

nearness

tapping you
behind your left shoulder
my fingers run down
the length of your long sleeve
stopping at the cuff
carefully measuring
the safe distance
between love
and friendship
and the nearness
of your hand
to mine

Remembering You Beloved

Beloved,

Tonight is one of those nights I wade through memories of you. It has been a year since we created those memories. Try as I may, I can never remove you out of me. Never completely. Everything that surrounds me reminds me of you. Necklaces. Books. Shoes. Clothes neatly hung in the closet. Dirty clothes scattered around me. Pillows. The bed. Piles of anything. Disarray of anything. Everything.

Yes, everything. You never created memories with me of everything, though. Except maybe for taxi cabs, tequila shot glasses, beers, cellphones, dimly lit restaurants and unventured hotel rooms. But I, I created memories with you of everything. I had dreams of us together involving everything. From trips to sugar-fine beaches in Cebu and Iloilo, escapades to the majestic mountains and caves of Sagada, Bontoc and Banaue, getaways to the mystical old towns of Batanes and Vigan. To holding hands along the avenues of Ayala and Makati, tight embraces under an umbrella on a rainy night in The Fort, stolen kisses on long walks in the stretch of Musashi-Kosugi. Up to me cooking my tocino-tasting adobo and you your spicy meal concoctions I've only heard of, us leaving the dishes for the morning and retiring playfully on our enchanted bedroom perfumed by jasmine-scented candles and burning incense. Yes, I created such memories for us. And more...

You see, I dreamt so much for us. Yet you never saw it. You went and played your games. I played it for a while too but I only ended up losing. Every time. All the time.

But a year has passed. I am only left with memories of you and I. Memories, I said, I created for us two without you knowing they ever existed. They were waiting to come true. For a year.

As the past year inched towards this time, this night, you seem to drift farther away from me. Distance does help in forgetting. But I've only forgotten what I felt for you. My dreams remain. And they always will until someone sees it and makes them come true. That someone can still be you. Or not.

Remembering,
Me

======
and the last entry to my old blog posted on June 24, 2004... awww, it's still about my first guy... grabeh ko kaigo! murag meteor nitugpa sa akong head!

voices from nowhere

"how can one love a stranger?" i asked.

"my dear," you answered from nowhere,
"after sojourning from someone's embrace to another,
never have i dreamt intensely to nestle in someone's arms as in yours."

"ahhh, another lofty dream cast in the air, i suppose?
remember, i am but a voice from nowhere."

"understand, i have picked you from nowhere, yet,
etched along the lines of destiny the meeting of our souls."

"oh? what then if i oppose this destiny you speak of?
love is not something i give to someone from nowhere.
dear stranger, would you still love me then, a stranger to your love?"

"love me, my love, and you will know we are no strangers."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

is it really possible to love someone whom one meets on the phone?

============

tsk tsk tsk... another old post from my old blog last May 13, 2004... tungkol naman sa isang bading na nakabihag sa aking pusho! :p

dear boy

aba aba aba! starring din pala si jonathan sa old blog ko last March 12, 2004!!! napaka-swerteng lalaki... nasulatan ko! and i seemed to be entranced with his beauty! another one of those things i can laugh at! hahaha... but jonathan is my friend na kaya laughable! hehehe

========

dear boy, you were so fine

if ivory were black
that would have been the color of your eyes --
they gleamed with fluorescent lights

you smiled shy
with a sleek metal that glimmered diamonds
among perfected snow white stones
dear boy, i couldn't sleep

i kept recalling how the seconds seemed still
with your every movement
your blinking
your smiling
your talking
your glancing my way
the seconds were so slow and long

dear boy, you were so fine
i hope to see you again

===========================

jonathan tuble... such a weird last name... yet the ring to it is simply magical! seeing him for the first time was like seeing my favorite japanese dishes, either fresh or steaming, delectably inviting but painfully untouchable!

that night, after a very long time of feeling again the feel of a TM (toastmasters) meeting, was made more unforgettable by that evening's host... no less than the fine boy, jonathan tuble!

his words weaved a web of magic! i was an intelligent fly who knew the snares of spiders yet i allowed myself to be caught!

oh, my words seem to jumble up in this recollection. recently a friend told me that good and careful writing (the ones that get approved for publishing) should have a consistency in imagery. but here i am mixing everything up from dishes, to magic, to a spider and a fly! =)

teeeheee, but i could never forget you, your eyes and your smile, jonathan... you're making my words clutter from my frenzied musings of you!

dear jonathan, you were so fine...

cycle

and another one of my posts before... February 27, 2004... grabeh! mushy mushy talaga ako nun dun sa ex ko! the good thing with keeping one's old mushy writes, you'll have something to laugh at because you've totally moved on! i remember the boy na lang but i don't remember the feeling anymore! :p

======

15 minutes to go and it'll be february 28. it'll be a year since that night he kissed and held me. they weren't kisses and hugs borne out of love though, on that night, for we were mere acquaintances who happened to answer the call of mundane desires unraveled that night by a few tequila shots for him and a couple of cocktail drinks for me.

i remember him telling me to text him after that shortlived making out. we didn't go farther than below our chests. i guess the drinks we had weren't able to totally eradicate our inhibitions. what followed were a series of text messages composed in different styles to lure him to meeting me again. well, we met again only on march 3. and that became "our date".

but barely 2 months passed, we just broke away. relaying what happened is more painful than when it actually happened.

yet all this time after that, i'm still here, probing around possibilities and getting burned all over again. this seems confusing yet, i, too, am confused. in between that bitter break away and now, i had had my alternate coldness and pleadings towards him. and just recently i just came to a conclusion that i do love him right after my previous conclusion that it was only lust. funny, i even made a poem of this "love" i just realized.

=====================

"do i love you?"

if love were measured by the times a heartbeat skips

or by the number of flame-like sparks that emanate from the eyes

or by a plethora of dreams built by the lover for him and his beloved

or by the longing, both quenched and unquenched, to touch and kiss

then had i loved you in as many as droplets of water from a cupping hand

then had i loved you in the ways the world has defined love

yet time promises nothing for these ways to stay

i no longer feel you close in my waking and sleeping moments

you're no more than a memory in the realm of my dreams

there is no longer a thirst for an embrace or a kiss to quench

and so have i stopped loving you as how fire dies when doused with water

and so have i lost my love for you as how the world views it

but there are these that hold me --

when i look at you, it is like seeing the part of the ocean that's blue

meeting with that part of the sky of the same hue

and i am like the wind that touches the blueness of both sea and sky --

an infinite lightness delivers to my core a sense of happiness

when i remember you, it is like rummaging through a trove of pictures

that captured glorious sceneries of the azure skies and oceans

of the mountains and clouds that cannot hide the grandeur of a setting sun --

mementos safely kept yet out in the open for me to behold

while the world sees a love that explodes with mixed emotions

i feel an implosion of bliss knowing you are where you've never been to

you have entered past the boundaries of my ego and being

rendering me helpless to the joy of... simply loving

requited or not, it knows no pain, requires no togetherness

until life defines love differently, right now, i say that i do love you

========================

but i'm only kidding myself! no matter how i describe an implosion of bliss within just because of the mere sight of him, i still feel hollowed, dissatisfied and depressed! stupid me! pathetic!

yet i do not want to go on feeling this way. even though i've allowed myself to call myself stupid and pathetic at this time, i'll try hard to really move on! i'll allow myself to wallow this time for me to shed off everything about him! and i'm writing it here where anyone can read this for me to be reminded that this is a promise long overdue to myself. at least this time, i'll have more witnesses than a meager number of friends who became tired of listening to my cyclic feelings!

my first haiku and blog

this was my first entry to my old blog at blog-city. gosh! even before pala schizophrenic na ko. kala ko ngayon lang ako ganito! :p this was posted pala on posted Friday, 5 December 2003.

someone wept tonight
for lifeless dreams, ironic
that heaven cried too
12.06.2003.03.07.am

it rained just right after i came back at the office at 9:30 pm. and i was meaning to write something here right away. but arrrggghhh!!! just able to put my thoughts only now! and it's 3 in the morning. and yes i'm still here at my workstation pounding at these words!

well, i'm not really that grumpy. at least i got to write a haiku inspired by the rain and by the "speech" i gave at our team's christmas party earlier. hmmm, a lot probably were surprised that i carry a brain on my head. i've been thinking lately how my co-workers regard me. definitely not a techie as what others think i ought to be! hmmm, a goddess perhaps as i often promulgate to the world in every chance i have! but i know better. i know a lot just see the swishy girly-talking and surprisingly-an-engineer entertainer. not the singing and dancing entertainer, mind you! i can't even walk straight (no pun intended), so i don't see myself belting a song in its right tune or throwing myself at the dance floor with the grace of a ballroom danseur. i have grace. but not of a dancer! ;)

hmmmm, i was supposed to write something serious here. but i guess my other personality has taken over again. the one that feels high with just nothing! (yes, i am shizophrenic!) i wonder where my catatonic half cowered. the one who was supposed to explain the "rain and pain" haiku.

oh well, i guess i'll have to continue writing this because i see my teammates tidying up their things. luckily i have more than two personalities. the one writing this is whom i like because i'm able to write.

or maybe i'm drunk from having no sleep. toink! got to go...

====
and nats posted the following comments then:

hey =)

last year pa pala to.. so many things happened last year, it seems like a whole other life lived from the window. i really dont want to go back to the memories, i want to run away as far as i can, away where it can no longer haunt me nor hurt me..

i wish you well on your own journey =)

paghahakot

this isn't my first blog actually. i had one at emmsville.blog-city.com. unfortunately, there came a time when our net-admins cried so much at all the sentimentalities and sad stories that filled my blog that they had to block blog-city from our network just so they won't be reading me again! duh! the nerve! hehehe

so i created this blog which i've abandoned for almost a year. and this blog is and SHOULD be a secret lest the net-admins find out --- and find out they that my stories now are even sadder since they are larger than lovelife lang!!! so ssshhhh... ;)

anyways, my old blog was deleted by blog-city. fortunately my ex-boyfriend louis was able to email me my blog entries. and so i'm posting all of them here for posterity's sake. :O)

nanie

"ibutang sa imong blog emman ha nga cute si nanie"

si nanie mismo ang niingon ana. although i will move heaven and earth just to prove her otherwise, pagbigyan na lang natin sya. masama magalit si nanie! pero uy, in fairness, pa-cute si nanie! :p

nanie, my statuesque of a seatmate, has been my ka-chika everyday since i came back from my horrendously horrible vacation last august. i wasn't in my jovial attitude (i still am not) when i came in last week of august but i easily warmed up to this gal due to her childish antics. though, i've been a bit reserved in our group, she's the one who can crack me up just by whipping up her expressions such as "lain kay ka", "ayyyy", "good job", "wow", "congrats", "uhuh", and "dayyy".

well, i have to stop praising nanie because it might boost her ego the wrong way. basin og feel na jud niya nga cute sya!

anyways, you see our pic naman. so judge for yourselves. basta all i can say is "nanie is pa-cute, emman is cute"!

ha ha ha! bleeeee nanie!

the return of the queen

if my memory serves me right, i had my last entry to this forsaken blog of mine november last year. i've still occassionally visited this blog since then thanks to some people who asked me if i had my own blog. i would pay it a visit and reread the entries then tell these people of the URL. as always, i've been tempted to rewrite my first short story titled "coming out" (like now) but i just don't have the motivation to do so. i feel lazy doing anything especially when i'm here at the office trying hard to get it through the day.

awww, i'm feeling a bit melancholic. not so me if you compare me to how i projected myself in my old posts. plenty of things have changed since november; not actually just changed but plenty of things happened that altered my views in the many facets of this so-called life of mine.

yesterday, an old high school friend's friend read my palms! i kept teasing him about my lovelife and about any dormant psychic powers i had which i pestered him to awaken for me! i'm sure he was a bit irritated with me but he gave me simple but profound "readings" nevertheless. he said i made many problems. in contemplation, i'd have to say he is right. i complicate things. i seem to many to be an adventurous person. i am. but i sometimes take my adventures to the negative side of things. thus sometimes i create my own problems. these are things which i should be forgetting but i tend to mull about over and over again in the duration of weeks or months. and this mulling takes me to bitterness and anger --- at my job, at others, at myself.

pathetic! that's how i'd pronounce of myself if i would be staring at me from an outside perspective of myself. but i've had these feelings before and i've emerged quite well from them. though i can be really bitter, i do not dwell in bitterness far too long. i'd say i'm still able to pick up the lessons despite all the resistance boiling within me.

anyways, as i write, my words become mixed up reflecting the perplexities that are housed in my soul right now. i have to get rid of them soon; these confusion and bitterness of mine. well, i'll be doing that soon enough. i'll be ushering out of my system all these anger, confusion and bitterness. soon. soon. soon. and i'll be bidding goodbye the thanklessness where i am in right at this moment.