Hany’s Blog

Reveries Underneath The Pristine Sheets

I discovered the feeling of ecstasy before I could afford my passions.

No, I don’t mean those little pills that misguided teens and tweens (and sometimes, pathetic threens) pop into their mouths in the trance and techno darkness, so they can pretend that they can get superbly drunk on water even if they’re perfectly conscious that they’re stuffing their tongues down an ugly unknown mofo’s throat and thrusting their pelvis in frustrated lust. I don’t mean chemically induced hallucinations and delusions that mimic a fraction of what real happiness would be like if only we took the time to deserve it. I don’t mean the ecstasy equivalent to escapism, self-denial and youthful, forgivable stupidity. That’s not ecstasy. That’s bullsh*t in a pill. You lose it when the sun rises and you start feeling the faint remnants of an endothermic hangover raging to make your nose bleed or your eyes water or your bed to turn into a 2-day if-I-can-convince-my-boss-that-I’m-sick-as-roadkill coffin of sweat, ibuprofen and noontime to dusk soap operas.

I mean the hands-on, mouthful, neck deep ecstasy of human involvement. The gratifying feeling of being conquered, controlled and completed by your own soul, your own heart and your own mind. The fulfillment of dreams. The discovery of love. The opening of Pandora’s box, finding only hope and none of the bad cr*p that had come with it before. I mean the ecstasy of knowing that this world, despite the blatant cracks on the surface and the white strands blending with the black and the incessant ringing of mobile phones in the middle of the movie of your life and the children starving in some corner of the universe, is in fact worth every bit of effort you put into it. Yes, that ecstasy.

I’ve tasted it and, now, I’m compelled to change the way I’ve lived in order to deserve it.

Just when I was starting to like the self-centric, superficial, generically cynical, commercially driven existence I’ve crafted in this quarter of a century, Fate decides to drop in and remind me why it was that I used to dream even when my eyes weren’t closed. I used to feel fireworks on the tips of my fingers. I had lost that. In the aftermath of hazy smoke and coughed up nightmares, I had lost the ability to see the moon when it was full and the stars when they fell.

But, I’ve touched the face of human beauty once again and I am overcome by its divinity. I find myself dizzy with a newly discovered hunger and thirst for an existence above this humdrum of paperwork that never ends, numbers that don’t add up, sex that never satisfies, opinions that know nothing and a life that doesn’t even resemble what they say happens after Once Upon a Time and before The End. This isn’t life. This isn’t living. This mock up of freeze-dried coffee, ready-to-wear clothing, concrete jungle, and fast food isn’t reality. These are things. They aren’t alive. But just because they aren’t and they’re everywhere, doesn’t mean we can’t be. That I can’t be.

So many of us have become complacent. No longer feeling the need to right what’s wrong. Often settling for what’s already been judged or what has been left unjudged. It’s safe. It’s easy. It’s there. We make intelligent, statistically peppered comments about politics, morals and economics to make us seem interesting or interested, as though these broad headings covered the essence of our reality and make us worth investing on. Everything is up for sale, but what are we selling? We can’t even grasp the intricacies of who we are. There’s that feeling in the morning of not wanting to wake up. Isn’t there something wrong when we are a generation, which categorically hates Monday? What has Monday ever done except come around every time Sunday (that bastard) leaves us? We are, in the same breath, too hard and too soft on ourselves. We take what’s easy and make it difficult. We feign complexity and depth and truth because we can’t find the real thing. Life’s become this ugly rhythm of just surviving.

Something is inherently questionable about splicing your soul into categories as though it were a library, with the Dewey Decimal System faintly tattooed in every eyelash that falls on a cheek or each drop of blood that smears out of broken skin. It’s strange because while we categorize living this way, it seems we have stopped writing books about our lives. Preppie. Emo. Jock. Slut. Geek. Ghetto. Catch-phrases and stereotypes are the bane of my existence. They’re traps. Worse than having 666 tattooed on my forehead, because I don’t even have the apocalyptic coolness factor of the devil owning me. No one owns me, nor you. We don’t own ourselves. We’ve turned to dust scattered in the hot breeze, before Death even became us. Or, maybe, I’m just hanging out in places where tomorrow has no poetry. Maybe this lack of words, for my part, is merely a result of being Unequivocally, Simply and Truly Tired.

But, of what? I haven’t done anything and I’m already tired of nothing. I want passion. I want it back.

I remember what it was like to be in love. Not just with a boy. Not just with a girl. Though, certainly, I have loved one and the other and a couple more of each several times and sometimes, all at the same time. I used to be able to fall in love with a lip-shaped smudge on the mirror. Or, a perfectly made paper airplane that glides and flips and floats and lands with ease on the pavement under the sweltering sun. Or, a mathematical proof that started out ugly with square roots and exponents and powers of two and ten and five and fractions that could make my mother cry, but ended quaintly and promptly at x being equal to y over a rainbow, or something like that. Or the sway of a woman’s hips as she walks across a garden, sweat on her upper lip and her nape, her blushing child at her hip, sucking on a lollipop and humming her lullabies to himself. Her skin, you just know, would be yellow and purple at the bone where her babe had been nestling since birth. But there is no pain, only the comforting ache of presence. So beautiful. A woman’s body is the map of the universe. It was made to make loving easy. Nothing was so ugly that it couldn’t teach you to love.

I remember that once upon a time I fell deeply in love with an old abandoned house with shutters made of capiz and a spiral staircase at the heart of its empty living room. Everyone hated it. It bred stories of witches and ghouls and unsaved souls and raped girls and evil stepmothers. I would have none of that. You could be a princess in that house, if you knew how to touch the sloped belly of the angel that stood sentry as a fountain in the front garden near the rusted, broken gate which haphazardly kept nothing out, not even earthworms. The house was condemned and every time I went in there, I knew I could die. That house smelted reality and surreality for me. I learned to walk around in my head freely while keeping my feet in check in case a wooden beam fell upon my neck. They tore it down one summer and for days tears would run down my cheek at the sight of the shards of glass and broken doors. Even that was beautiful to me. The pain of loss, the destruction and the hope for something new. That house taught me to dream. So many things used to teach me to dream. I wanted to learn. I wanted to master making dreams come true.

I don’t think it’s right for me to keep saying I’m okay when people ask me how I am. Not because I’m not okay, but because such a big question requires for an answer that’s more thought out and more meaningful. People would probably look at me oddly if I tell them that my heart feels like the aria that the fat lady sings at the end of an opera, or that I feel like eating rice cakes on an overcast day when they say, “How are you?” or “What’s up?”. But, people deserve real answers, even if they don’t necessarily mean it when they ask that question. (Although, they should.) If I asked, I would want to hear an answer like, “Oh, I feel like I’ve just stubbed my toe a couple of million times, but I don’t feel the pain because I have someone to kiss me and make me all better.” So many questions about how this world doesn’t make sense that don’t have answers. We should have answers for something so simple as, “How are you feeling today?” Me, I feel like raindrops on a window pane. I’m just taking my time, sliding down and merging with the other droplets. I want to grow with someone. I want to be water. I want to be everywhere.

I don’t know what this is. I don’t know where my thoughts are headed. While my need for control is making me insane with want to hold it down, a greater part of me wants the feeling to be elusive for a while longer. I want to make it hard for me to absorb this feeling so that if I succeed in pinning it down, I’ll know to hold onto it longer. Enough feelings in this world are taken for granted. So carelessly do we throw around the words love and faith and need. I have no right to ruin your experience of either of these three feelings and the million-odd other emotions this world has to offer, so I’m not going to.

Just… I don’t know… don’t rush into falling in, because falling out happens quickly, whatever feeling it is you’re tipping over the side of the cliff for, be it love hate lust hurt. Don’t fall in love with everyone you see, but fall in love more often. It takes practice to hold onto it and practice to let it go when you need to. This living costs more than we know and sometimes, when our dreams come true, we realize we can’t afford it and we’d have to give it up. When we hold on, our hands bleed as the pieces of our broken heart slice through the determination to keep something that we don’t have the strength or the wisdom to protect. Purity is expensive, as is truth and ideals and morals and meaning. There is no currency strong enough to protect them. They protect each other. We are so in a hurry to grow up, fall in love, die even. We don’t seem to have the same urgency to know. And, knowing could save so many lives and loves.

This seems to be a wakeful dream and like all dreams, things just stain together. We know it doesn’t make sense, but the nonsensical transition from one scene to another is tied together with invisible strings that keep the dream from falling apart or you from waking up. Tongues burn with stories underneath the sheets at night and I write stories that leave butterflies in my stomach knowing that it’s real, but not really having it makes the flutter seem shallow. I’m waiting until I’m awake enough to dream, so that I can find an island in the caverns of my shape-shifting body where I can skip stones and swim in that reflection of clouds in the horizon that seems a lot like Love. I want to burn in its heat and live in color

To those who are not lucky to have known my brother Raz when he was alive, the following posts are just glimpses of how witty and intelligent he truly was.

As a treat for those who love him, I will be posting some of his essays in my blog.  He would want it this way. 

Raznev "Arvee" Fernando

February 20, 1984 - July 31, 2005

*** Entry date: 2003-08-18 ***
*** Entry title: Until She Wakes Up ***
Until She Wakes Up

I have nothing much to do. Mother is still resting and I just got back from dreamland. Who am I? Let me have a rundown of my life.

I am a bastard born out of wedlock, who have never been to school. My father is a member of the US Army who happened to be stationed in Vietnam where he stumbled with my mother (People call her slut, I don’t know why?) After my mother gave birth to me, my so-called dad abandoned us with nothing but a measly 10 U.S. dollars. Sure he said he will be back. But that was almost 20 years ago.

My mother hanged on his promise. And when he didn’t return, she believed father died as a hero serving his country. I personally thought he went back to his native land, in the arms of his real family – beautiful wife, gorgeous children and all. She later had the same thought as mine.

That is the reason why my mother hates me so much. She despises me and considers me trash. She exclaimed that I reminded her of dad.

“You are a devil just like your fucking father!”.

“I wished I have never met that lousy excuse of a man! Then I wouldn’t have conceived an ugly child like you!”

I suffered from different physical abuse as long as I could remember. But that was nothing compared to the name-calling, the insults and the tongue-lashings I have received. But I know my mother didn’t mean any of those. She is just protective of me. She doesn’t want me to grow up like my father. I hate my father.

When I was about 5, I was forced to beg on the streets for my own food. Mother said she will no longer be responsible for my existence.

“If you want to live, you have to work for it!”

“I have endured so many things for you. Now it is time to be accountable for yourself.”

After some time, poverty has caused more families to live on streets. There were more beggars wandering around, seeking alms. They were competitions, my mother said. So out of her love for me, she helped me. Mother said “sympathy is what drives people to give”, then she did what she thought would be best. She mutilated my left arm and disfigured my face. Sure it caused pain, but it sure made my begging more efficient. Plus I am right-handed so that wasn’t much trouble for me.

So for several years, I have roamed the corners to plead for few coins to quench my hunger and thirst. Some days I was lucky. Some days I have none. Clothings were out of the question. I have only so few to spend on food and drinks.

No matter how cruel mother appears to me, she couldn’t hide the fact that she still loves me. I remember during a cold December night, I was almost freezing to death. She lent me her blanket for the night. I even saw her smiled at me, greeting me a Merry Christmas.

One hot afternoon, I came back from scavenging the garbage cans in Main Street. I have found so much left overs, me and mother would eat for week.

“Mother! I have something for you!”

But she didn’t answered back. So I went inside our little house made of cartons and used boxes. I found her cuddled in her favorite blanket sleeping like a log. I kissed her forehead and hugged her as tight as possible.

“I love you.”

That was five months ago. Mother is still sleeping. I am getting worried since her hair is starting to fall. She loves her long, smooth, silky hair! I am afraid that when she wakes up, she will blame me for it.

When will she wake up? I asked myself. Yesterday, a rabid dog tried to bite mom’s arm off. Good thing I was there to defend her. I will protect her no matter what! I will not leave her side until she gets up and orders me around, cursing me again.

I won’t leave her side, not until she wakes up.

*** Entry date: 2003-08-14 ***
*** Entry title: Prisoner of the Heart ***
Prisoner of the Heart

Usually I am upfront with people I love. They say I am a hopeless romantic. I just do not openly tell people I love them, I do it in style. Poems, proses, songs, creative gifts, exotic foods – some of the few things I did for my beloved. But there is always an exception.

Have you ever been in love with someone you could not have? I have, and it was not a good feeling. God knows how much my affections were, I just could not have the courage to let it flow. I tried to send her love letters with my name on it, I just could not follow through. In fact, I haven’t really finished a single one. All I did was to secretly love her, I became her passive lover. It was like, admiring a sculpture you could not touch and feel. Sorry for being mushy, it is just that, I could not help but think back. What if she has affections for me too? Was it possible that the feeling was mutual? I would not really know now, would I?

I spent most of my day thinking about, “what might have been”. I searched for the letter I tried to send her. It was not really the greatest, it was not even completed, but it surely came from my heart. It goes:

PRISONER OF THE HEART

I am always thinking, how could a man live without food and water for one month
But a thought came to me, how could a man live without love for just a second?

I want to shout and tell the whole world how much I LOVE YOU. You made me crazy, you made me a fool
Love is very mysterious and much more of an adventure rather than a monotonous, happy ending fantasy,
It is not all happiness but more of sacrifices

One look from you is enough to make me survive a day,
One smile would carry me through a week.
You caught me yet still do not know the feelings i hide
Would I always be this prisoner inside?

Not a day has passed that I did not think of you
Heaven knows, how lost I am without you
Would my love see me through and help me exist
Even if it is unanswered and unrequited.

Reading and seeing the letter gave me emotional surges. There are just things in our lives that were meant to be and we should leave it that way. Destiny as the reasonable puts it, and fate as the romantics.

*** Entry date: 2003-08-08 ***
*** Entry title: A Train Ride Called Life ***
A Train Ride Called Life

Here is the deal.

By age 20 I am ready for a job as a corporate lackey.
By age 25 I am a corporate lackey.
By age 30 I have an army of corporate lackeys.
By age 40 I can afford to retire.
By age 45 I am retired.
By age 50 I am dead.

No. I am not a ghost, and I don’t have a job yet. I am not yet even finished with my studies. I’m only 19.

That, up there, is my life. All mapped out. Look out world here I come! Just follow the tracks, little train. You’ll get there. Don’t let the twists and turns bother you. You do what you have to do.

You’ll get there. Somehow.

All aboard!

Look around.

The train starts.

I was born. I learned to walk and speak my first word. The sun, the wind, everything feels so alive.

The train takes its first turn.

That was my first day in school. I was young then, about 6. It was hard adjusting at first, but I had managed. Schoolyard was like a ruthless battleground with no allies beside me. Eventually, I found friends. The schoolyard is still a battleground, with bullies, snobs, and freaks – these and more different personalities thrived, but at least I have friends to face them all.

The train takes another turn.

This is it, my first emotional grief – an argument with a friend. Got hurt a lot. Made up then moved on. After a turn comes another, each one more drastic than the last.

The train encounters a lot of curved tracks.

That was High School. The best and worst experiences of my life transpired on those years. The loudest laugh was heard here and the most painful tears were also shed.

The train speeds up

The Present. Time flies fast. Every second counts. Whatever I do today will have a fervent effect tomorrow. The decisions I will make today, will either make or break me.

The train stops.

There are several tracks ahead of me, each one passing a dark tunnel. I am uneasy but I have to choose. I have to continue.

The train goes through a long tunnel.

It is dark and I can not see much. All I can see is the path behind me and the bright light in front. Should I go back? I am quite afraid. Is this my future? Did I do the right thing? Did I choose the right path?

The train seems to be getting closer to the bright light.

Is the bright light, the station? Am I really that close to my destination? What is my destination?

The train continues.

All throughout I keep reminding myself that I will not regret anything – my choices, actions. As I move closer to the halt, I keep wondering about the things I will encounter ahead. Will I make it to the end? Yes, but as what?

Back to reality

Life doesn’t always go my way. There would always be the required twists and turns to shake up my plans. Will my train be derailed or will it manage and continue on to my journey? As usual and as infuriating as it sounds, I don’t have complete control.

It is quite frustrating to know that however I planned out everything, there would always be screw-ups and failures. Virtually, nothing is foolproof. Basically, the train just follows its course. I would just hang on as I see how my strategy on life goes. Again, it will be another waiting game with me directly involved.

You’ll get there train. And so will I.

*** Entry date: 2003-08-08 ***
*** Entry title: Ma, I’m Home! ***
Ma. I’m Home!

My class ends at four P.M. and at about eight o’clock I am still around the city doing some kind of school requirement, and well, okay, partly gallivanting.

My phone rings and I was right in predicting that it’s my mother on the other line… again!

Well, what’s new with her or with any mother that is? She’s basically like that, she worries a lot about her kids. She says that she only cares for us and so she checks on us every now and then. And that is where the litany of her advice starts. So, what else can I do but to leave the place and just go home?

And I was home… but only physically. My heart and mind was still set on that place where I left. She asked me to take my dinner, but sorry, I was already full. So I just went straight to bed and tried to tuck myself to sleep. Then she knocked at the door still checking on me. She asked me to tell some stories about the day’s happening but I unconsciously yelled at her. I said that I was tired and all I wanted to do was to get some sleep.

She left my room meekly. She left after she kissed me goodnight. She left me with the caring words “Matulog ka ng mahimbing anak. Maaga pa klase mo bukas.” (Sleep well my child. Your classes are early tomorrow.) And she left me dumbfounded.

I hadn’t really had a good night sleep that night. I am confused on why despite the fact that I yelled at her, she still cares for me. I am confused on why she still loves me and is excited to see me home even if I don’t feel much the same. I don’t know. There’s something at the back of my mind that tells me I have to change my ways.

So I said to myself that when I get home after my class, I’d kiss her and excitedly tell the day’s happenings to her. And maybe, just maybe, I would tell her about what goes beyond my school life – the personal stuff.

Well, there’s no need to worry. “Ma, I’m home!”

Will You Be My Friend?
James Kavanaugh

Will you be my friend?
There are so many reasons why you never should:
I’m sometimes sullen, often shy, acutely sensitive,
My fear erupts as anger, I find it hard to give,
I talk about myself when I’m afraid
And often spend a day without anything to say.
But I will make you laugh
And love you quite a bit
And hold you when you’re sad.
I cry a little almost every day
Because I’m more caring than the strangers ever know,
And, if at times, I show my tender side
(The soft and warmer part I hide)
I wonder,
Will you be my friend?
A friend
Who far beyond the feebleness of any vow or tie
Will touch the secret place where I am really I,
To know the pain of lips that plead and eyes that weep,
Who will not run away when you find me in the street
Alone and lying mangled by my quota of defeats
But will stop and stay - to tell me of another day
When I was beautiful.

Will you be my friend?
There are so many reasons why you never should:
Often I’m too serious, seldom predictably the same,
Sometimes cold and distant, probably I’ll always change.
I bluster and brag, seek attention like a child.
I brood and pout, my anger can be wild,
But I will make you laugh
And love you quite a bit
And be near when you’re afraid.
I shake a little almost every day
Because I’m more frightened than the strangers ever know
And if at times I show my trembling side
(The anxious, fearful part I hide)
I wonder,
Will you be my friend?
A friend
who, When I fear your closeness, feels me push away
And stubbornly will stay to share what’s left on such a day,
Who, when no one knows my name or calls me on the phone,
When there’s no concern for me - what I have or haven’t done -
And those I’ve helped and counted on have, oh so deftly, run,
Who, when there’s nothing left but me, stripped of charm and subtlety,
Will nonetheless remain.

Will you be my friend?
For no reason that I know
Except I want you so

*** Entry date: 2003-08-08 ***
*** Entry title: Barney Dancing With The Power Rangers ***
Barney Dancing with the Power Rangers

I slept for almost 12 hours, straight! I went to bed last night around 10 and I woke up past 9 PM! Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine spending the day in bed, dozing off. I felt like a sloth and was very very tired not to mention very very hungry the minute I stepped out from my sleeping quarters.

So no quests to save the world for me today, neither a fairy tale adventure nor battling the dragons and evil wizards in my life. Although I had lots of dreams which I really could not vividly recall exactly at the moment. What I could recall though is that strangely I dreamt of Barney the Dinosaur (only he was rainbow-colored instead of the usual color purple) dancing with the Power Rangers. Weird huh? Very weird even for me. Now what do you suppose it means?

Thank God I did not wake up singing the Barney song, Uggh… the thought sent a chill through my spine. I guess tonight would be a very long night.