Mardev.

Visited the farm out of Lucban-town. Less than half an hour jeepney ride, then uphill trike ride, then through rock and grass and paddy on foot. Twice slipped, one was when (ignoring premonition/common sense) a leap was attempted from a mossy rock (right arm plunged through mud), another was up a lesser hill fetching coconuts (left hand in this time, only more shallow but more pronounced, on the jacket sleeve at least). Mosquitos as large as was convenient, at the time, black with some white bands. Three coconuts full of tree filtered sweet water downed. Saw a small toad (could fit inside thumb but could could not be caught with hand). Lunch: sardines, salt, rice, fern, fish sauce, leaves. Back to highway before dusk. My inheritance the knowledge that I may/may not return/live/be alone here.

I poured it on them like hot soup. And I ate it up like regurgita.
Ponelem-ponelem. Tonight I will visit the roof and hang.
Tomorrow, the world will be made of glass, but it will mellow,
(as one friend told of toilet bowl piss)
like the words I said half-remembered.

I slept with earplugs early this morning. I felt, without the help of my ears, the electric fan’s whirring as a grating vibration. Ringing in my ears. Too much calcium? My dream, as usual is about jumping through rooftops seducing girls with unforgivable personality flaws. This time she wore underwear, how thoughtful of her. Voted today. Names through the haze of a world not of my making (Wha?) And yes, later in the day I went to Quiapo, bought Up Dharma Down’s album (first) and the 300 soundtrack; one for bitterness and the other as an apology to myself for having folded today because naked I told her (though safely from a distance) I am folding I am going to play the nice guy to save time and face because of your need for space. I folded, between my heart and my spleen, it’s heart you know feeling you have some spleening to do. Tomorrow we might meet, but not see each other again, a skill easy to learn, of course. I am listening to 32 flavors. "Someday I will be hungry, and eat the words that I just said". When I get home, if I look up, there will be suits for tomorrow, and for ironing.

I should’ve stayed in the office and shoved the moments into pockets of productivity punctuated only by perishable possibilities then left at eight though what happened was a wait of one hour at the MRT Boni since I left at about six twenty gap the office then the wait until about eight thirty where somewhere between were shoving matches and a near fisticuffing hmm wordfight eventually and a plan to write a poem wherein one could incorporate the phrase equidistant rats but then there’s only people of which a few were eye candy attractive women and many mirrors of my own overbearing many insecurities, gap one of whom I had a near romance with though only as an alternative to a day well-concluded and half-forgotten  but I ended up expiring as my MRT stored value did through a seventy-five minute lapse and by the end of the day was left thinking about which tarot cards I would pick tonight and what vegetables I’d eat tomorrow.

I am departing by degrees. What a surprise it would be, to know that one has never even left.

Same day I cruised Manila Bay, I walked my way to the walls: sometimes, Manila Zoo has four m’s and five o’s, and then there’s nine m’s and ten o’s. There are rats in the elephant moat. An bird (like a native chicken with longer legs and a larger head) outside the cage eyeing me from above.Philippine deer grazing on grayed grass. Lost a staring contest against an lizard. Head bobbing not-so-green iguanas. A tick on the nose tip of the reticulated python. Rhea flexing feathers. To love like a caged crocodile. Or like a wild pig lying in the cold damp earth, miles from home. That man in boots is either holding sinigang na baboy, or a bag of zebra urine. Solitary zebra is my inner sadness, unacknowledged. Why does the rust show in the railings? Look under, the elbows. Porcupines sleeping inside cement logs. Mostly monkeys. Getting peacocky. Who put the fruitbats houses on the floor? Jumping fountains: up a single stream, down a dozen droplets. Child musing how delicious a pirarucu, black and orange pink, must be (did she live in the Amazons in some other life?). Maya interlopers, sharestealing meals with the wired birds. When last I was here, the canteen was twice as large, the gift shop too, and many times more exotic…A few birds eyes are just whites. Moments when a hawk was spread-eagled on the floor. Sweet kissing cockatoos. Plain peahens. Not so casso-wary for bird droppings. Hippo snouts submerged, there and back again. Croc’s mouth perpetually open. No giraffe but hay. Are those ticks too on the tiger’s fur? ("Lion’s loins" would have rhymed, but there weren’t any…lions.) Spanish pa, Filipino ma: prende Matteo. Elephant, no birds to take the ticks away.

Weeks ago, I got a certified true copy (true copy? ting!) of my birth certificate (the kind asked for by conscientious employers, I think) from the Manila City Hall and it was…bureau-crazy. Right then, I decided to…baywalk. Along Muralla, I met the most beautiful girl in the world (among many, many others of course) and she had a pimple on the left dimple. Mimesis, simple. That was after I passed the Manila Bulletin…art dec(h)o? The platform extending to the sea like tongue, or someone’s false teeth, closed. Walk on. So there I was facing the sea, a migration of clouds to the east. Under them, for the lack of a better word(?) …. "galloping" waves because it looked like it. Really. Swear! Or so many swimmers breastroking. Sat facing the sea, vagrant homosexual couple in a Madonna-And-Child pose to my left, and directly ahead, the "PMI Training Ship" and "AMOSUP PTGWO ITF" (PTSWD?) at bay, like…awkward lovers. Oh I am running out of cliches (and I can’t even type the word right…another cleeshay.) Where is my love? Dry wind breaking the heat. So few sea cockroaches skittering about. Restaurants by the seaside asleep, the metal tables and chairs rusty, could be wishing they were somewhere else…drier. Madonna decides to smoke, steps up on the ledge, blocking my view of the equine sea. Why are you staring? You must have been some temptress in some ancient time, but that was so long ago. The Child dozes on, unaware of his lover’s attempt at unfaithfulness. Kapalua, arms embracing the sea. Decorative spheres, dotting the bay at intervals, are people sitting from the corner of the eye. Self walking away, past the cement and rubber paint Indian totems, past the sea cockroaches/land shrimps/armored aphids /babirusas metamorphosed getting pecked at by maya birds, past the jumpy soldiers guarding the US Embassy, secretly praying for some excitement, some excuse to make those firearms jump. A plane descends over the Westin Philippine Plaza. Vendors with goods unsold. My feet ache.

A bundle of yesterdays ago, for breakfast I bought (pumpkin in coconut milk…) wrapped in a page from the new Yellow pages: on both sides, "grid maps" of where practically(?) I’ve spent almost my entire life I was here and there and other…/ A packet of yesterdays ago, for an errand, I bought (tomato sauce…) and then there was a line/queue concept inside the mind of an aunt-like woman who jumped her eyebrows for me (to "make it real"=the concept) and I then was about to put on my "outwardly controlled/ inwardly indignant" mask (to show: the concept=nonexistent) and then I thought, "Is her daughter lovely?" …so I chose the future, gave her a smile and held the line. A pinch of yesterdays ago, I was "overchanged" with a twenty peso bill, given back mutually embarassing-ly, thought-about self-consciously, fraud-like honesty pretendingly…

I had a dream. I was behind the estante and I said "walkthrough." Cherrie proceeded to correct me, says walk-thr-oh-ooh (like thoroughly pronounced as truly?), because I said walk-true. Though I was conscious of deliberately high-faluting my explanation by using the word (with my tongue tip touching my upper front teeth and resting on my palate half the time as though my mouth itself was trying to affirm my position), in true Taurean typicality fashion I was determined on my absolute correctness. Being right became irrelevant a few seconds later when I woke up. But what could the dream mean? Walk true. The subconscious as literalist.

First thing in the morning I go to the market to buy ground pork meat. The assistant butcher was chopping a backbone. The cleaver lands, and I get a tiny piece of pig smack on the edge of my lips. Romantic. Mostly I get just blood, and not anywhere near an erogenous zone.