:REPOSITORY OF IDEAS:
1. A story about indigenous societies; especially about the shaman. Shamans, according to Father Demetrio, undergo this process of initiation and undergo some sort of death for them to be able to acquire powers.
Heehee.. I wanna write a story about a Filipina shaman. ü She's lost for a while in the forest (death), meanwhile her little brother in the village dies. There will be anitos and mystery. ü
This is needs a lot of historical data though. ü

Tonight seeing the
Stars, vaguely, outshone by the
Moon, all out, crowded by the
Clouds, populating 30% of the
Sky, brighter than your midnight black,
of the infinity they say beyond.

Feet is freedom and running, heaven. Each step took her farther from where she was and closer to who she wanted to be.

It's not initiative but inertia that propelled her forward. In short heaving breaths, she thought about the endorphins-- imagined it blue and cool-- coursing through her body, mingling with the ache and the pain.

Under the moonlight, she watched her skin glow and felt her body tighten into that of perfect hourglass. A hundred and fifty pounds was never the picture of beauty in this decade.

This is unlike anything she's ever done in her life. Normal girls don't just stand up and walk out in the middle of conversation about clothes, even if she haven't spoken in and only listened quietly at the corner of the table. They don't let their feet lead them wherever they lead them, especially to dark and empty school grounds where she finds herself now. But she didn't realize it happening until her feet took her away from normal.


And in between streetlights were darkened trees, fields and buildings. From the smooth concrete of the emptied she ran to a field. The grass felt wet above the muddy ground.

She raises her arms and readies her body for the first time she would do cartwheels.

The crack of dawn sees a dewy smile and a cracked neck.
The trees remain silent.

Oliver and I once talked about passion for work. What does it mean, exactly? I asked. He couldn't explain it himself.

And lives revolve around the vague and unpinnable word passion.

I remember telling him about Franz Kafka, and what I've read in some introductory pages before Metamorpohoses. Franz Kafka's passion for writing was was so strong that it overrode all other desires in his life. But at the same time, he was scared of letting himself competely to it because he believed that it will leave nothing else for him.
I don't know how else to make it concrete to people who don't immediately understand.

I tell you what I told Marj last night, his passion is both enviable and pitiable. It's knowing with certainty what you're meant to do, but it's frightening to have because you're nothing outside of it. One good thing about being spread too thin is that you know you'll still survive if a leg is cut off, or if an eye is poked out.

In a study somewhere, it said that poets die earlier than all writers; but most writers in general die early rather than those with other occupations and preoccupations. Poets, writers and artists feel more intensely than others, and it takes too much toll on their psychological well being.
Emo is not joke, really.

And to choose writing and art, it's to choose to open yourself up more to that deep cesspool of emotions that leads you to ecstatic highs, dismal crevasses and all all else in between.

Writing is escape, but at the same time it's plunging deeper into where you are. More and more you see the dialectic everywhere, tensions that keep everything apart and everything bound together.

Because I feel severely unhappy. And I find that the option to create something is open. Maybe in the future, I might even see it as the point. Should I take my particular unhappiness and attempt to make it universal? And give birth to a child that stands through human time, a comment on the human situation?

An entire village was startled.

It was morning when a neighboring sea-side village found the body of the first. Her legs tangled up with slimy seaweeds, the crabs prayed on her face—thanking the gods for a good meal. Overnight, the others were washed up ashore and by morning, the beach was littered with carcasses. And the sea that mothered the fishing village until then became a cold, devouring leviathan that spit and threw up bodies in frightening regularity. For weeks, their bodies came and taught the fisher-folk the various stages of putrefaction.

They did not dare venture out to sea. Obviously, the gods were displeased: a storm brewed dangerously, the sky had been overcast for weeks.

By the second week, they counted forty-seven males, thirty-eight females, eighteen children, and a puppy. The dead were the inhabitants of a village in a nearby plateau. Two miles away from their village was a famous cliff that jutted out to the sea.

When the investigators from Manila came, they examined the empty houses.

In the first house they entered, they saw breakfast spread out on a table. Flies settled on the putrid sardines on a plate. They could make out the teeth grooves on a half-eaten pan de sal. In another house, they saw baby things spread out on a bed. The soiled nappy was spread and the clean diaper was left unused.

Near the communal poso, there was a gathering of buckets and clothes that suggested that women were doing laundry together. The chickens were left out of their coops and wandered around, mindlessly pecking the ground.

The investigators, J. Ramos and S. Santigan, deduced what had happened to the villagers. With very solemn faces, they told the media-men: approximately two weeks ago, the villagers suddenly dropped whatever it was they were doing. They walked for two miles until they reached the cliff. There, they jumped off to the sea.

The fisher-folk concluded that the gods protested at having been made the unwilling murderers. The sea, raged against the befouling of her body. Their anger took form of a violent storm that threw all remaining carcasses on the shore.

Should there be an introduction?
I have another blog that features the mundane comings and goings of my life as well as a few trivial markers on fleeting insights.
But this is completely another blog. This is about writing and the few snippets of stories and poems I've written and hope to write. Maybe even about books and striking quotes and excerpts..

To be perfectly honesty, writing has always scared me.