Mental Picture 2.1

They say Taipei is one of the safest cities in the world, and I keep this in mind as I take the half hour walk back to my hostel. It was nearing midnight and it would have been pointless to run to a train or bus station as I had already missed the last trips. It could have been my visitors' ignorance that gave me the feeling of security, or the fact that I'd had a bit of wine before walking, but no danger came to me that night. 

I remember taking a picture of a cafe, because it reminded me of a street in Munich for some reason. Do cities end up looking alike in the dark? Or perhaps I never stay long enough tell them apart. 

Maybe one day.

----

I tried getting back into Pokemon Go in Taipei but couldn't concentrate, so I've started playing it again in Manila if only to have another excuse to wander not so aimlessly about. Besides, I do love walking.

Mental Picture 2.0

I am in Taiwan, seated in a train to the city. Outside, small houses dot the passing hills like mushrooms, all asleep in a veil of descending fog. I try to spot an open door, to try to catch a glimpse of what lives people lead inside, but the vision rushes past, and my eyes are blurry with sleep. 

In the distance, Taipei emerges from the endless white sky.

----

I'm going to try to write again, for myself. It's been years. 

Draft, September 17, 2014

"i will let him occupy me for a moment, i tell myself. this moment is a long, dark and hopeless chasm in which i constantly find myself--at wit's end, usually. a series of repeated blunders, impenetrable plot walls (move, tangina, move!) and sometimes even the smallest of trifles (noise. and i live in manila.) sometimes in my frustration, i had slept away entire days. "congrats on subitting an article!" texts a friend, who is overseeing one of the projects in which i contribute to--in pathetic, sporadic fashion. I'm sorry, i wanted to tell him. but i don't, because what if he was actually in a congratulatory mood and the apology would have confunded things further--nah. i'm too full of shame for any kind of response, to be honest.

have just come home from baguio after having interviewed a woman, L, whose family had been weavers for generations. They are about to debut at a design fair soon, and they are wary of having their designs--a labor of love, a kind or rennaissance you might say, for their entire village--pirated for mass production.
"come write about us," her husband, a friend for many years now, keeps asking me. I come, because I want to write, and what wonderful things they have shown me. I have planned what i am to write, all in my head. I don't know what to do next. I'm terrified of many things.

kababawan, putakte.

During a lull in the interview, Tomcat went and asked L about what the colors of their textiles meant. I never thought of that. I couldn't have been gladder to have had him with me at that moment. and i had only asked about what the patterns meant.

"Mahal mo na? Mahal mo na agad?"
"Oo naman." Besides, how can we put a clock to such things. recently, have been awake and at work far more often. not much change in output, but more attempts have been made nonetheless.

I'm still terrified."


Written, September 17, 2014.

I want to embrace her, tell her, "You poor, silly thing."

I want to tell her, "Listen to your head, look at all the tiny red flags."

I want to scream at her, "Run! Run as far away as your little feet will take you!" for there is nothing but pain at the end of that tunnel.

Only pain, a dark, seething, pain.

Halls for Heroes

Chiang Kai Shek Memorial Hall

"It's so wide," are the first things out of my mouth. Everything was wide, and grey, and quiet, as if everything was built for remembering. We think back to the shrines we built for our own heroes back home, how they had no room for remembering; no room even, for themselves.

Mental Picture 5, and 6

You are sitting across the aisle from me, fast asleep. We are on our way back to the airport after five days of adventure all over Taiwan, our feet sore from walking every waking moment. This is the first time that we are not sitting together--with together meaning as a two-headed entity with fused bodies and entangled limbs and clasped hands-- because we had come up to this bus as among the last few passengers and the only seats left were singular seats--separate, but across each other. I wished only to be next to you and cradle your sleeping head, as we did for each other in between all our adventures, watching the city that had played our strange but affable host, rush past for the last time.

---

You are a red jacket, and neon green backpack, as if you had decided to become a beacon in a sea of people wearing all the other colors, and places whose colors were either muted and worn down through time, or bright and artificial and fleeting. Before you, it had always been easy for me to lose myself in places and unexplored corners of new cities, and it had been easier to let myself do so. With you, there is no place that is unfamiliar now, or too enormous, or too frightening. In a train station blurred with the swiftness of hundreds of people hurrying to and from trains, there is no more fear of getting swept away. You are all red and green, standing still,waiting, and I could always find you.

Begnas di Yabyab (Written last Nov 2013)

 

Little cutie all dressed up for the Begnas di Yabyab

It was not strange to find the street empty. Thousands of miles above and away from the lowlands where I was raised, the people of Sagada rose before the sun did, and at almost 8am I had already missed them by hours. It was the morning after a storm, and plants that had been too weak against the rain and wind lay helplessly in the mud. The air hung warm with the steam of the wet earth, relief from the cold. Minutes ago, a friend had said brusquely through the phone, to come out by the road and wait. Not knowing what to expect, I drifted into a nearby weaving shop to pace, first out of faith, and then desperation. The storeowner, amused at my unease, later took me aside, asking if I was there to watch the indians, and, confused, I stood with him by the door as he explained what warranted my waiting.

Mental Picture 4

We are making our way through a labyrinth of tombs, taking shelter from the noon sun underneath the overgrowth of plants in the yards of some of the neglected dead. In their wild, abandoned state they have managed to grow more beautiful. We try entering forgotten tombs and look at the pictures and paintings, most of them faded and dark. Sometimes only their sad eyes remain.

I realize I have become more reckless. Thrilled at the idea of exploring, i take several turns and find a lion dog embedded in a strip of wall. I realize that i talk to myself less, when i say to you, "someone's watching over us," but it dawns upon me that i had lost myself in the maze. It takes me only the sound of your careful footsteps to find my way back.

Sometimes i fancy us being guests of the ghosts that still wander the cemetery: the helpful old man on the bike, the old lady with yellow hair peering out of a mausoleum offering us some shade. The statues you photographed, bleached white by the sun. Souls watching over others. What a day, to think lightly of our mortality.