me, in quotes

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation. Your character is what you really are while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
~ John Wooden

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.
~ Benedict Spinoza

To be nobody-but-myself in a world which is doing its best, night and day to make me everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.
~ E. E. Cummings

All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
~ George Orwell, Animal Farm

I don't mind straight people as long as they act gay in public.
~ T-shirt worn by Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls during a network-TV interview

big 

for dixie

You have left me. You did not only leave me alone but you left me with the very distinct possibility that I may never ever find someone like you. That you might be able to find someone new and replace me in your life. That I may be stuck in this limbo that I’m currently in and you would do so well in your new world that I may never be able to bring myself to look at you and bring myself to think that you were once my peer, my equal. I’m left. I’m never alone. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not lonely. It would be too melodramatic to break out into odes and sonnets of how you are terribly missed at this early a time, yet it would also be hypocritical to dismiss the thought. Because you really are terribly missed and that’s a fact. You are my friend, my sister. You gave me a fleeting taste of heaven every time I find myself wallowing in the quagmire of my own version of hell. I miss that as much as I needed that. I shudder to think that one day I may never be able to recognize my own reflection in the mirror without your guiding light. You did catalyze a lot of my self-discoveries. You may not know this at a conscious level but you have shown other people themselves – their best, their worst, their basic humanities. And if for no apparent reason, sometimes you feel good and wonderful deep inside, it’s because you are - Good and Wonderful.
That’s why your family and friends saw you off at the airport when you left for the melting pot. That’s why they hugged you and cried before you embarked on another journey. That’s why I couldn’t. I couldn’t see you leave me. I couldn’t cry. I’m not that strong.

tipsy 

a love letter

I love you. Have I ever told you that? Have I ever really told you and made you feel that? I apologize for accomplishing a lousy display of my friendship. I know that you are the one that I’ve always needed and thank god, fated to share a part of my miserable, pathetic life through all eternity. In the course of our friendship, I may not have made you felt special but you are. You just don’t know it. You are. You are one of the exclamation points in my life. Life could never be more wonderful. You complete me. For that I am eternal grateful. It may not have manifested in our daily strife together against these insurmountable odds in life but I am. I feel inadequate when I’m with you but somehow in your own version of charm, you have made me felt so assured of my capabilities as a person as if I’ve been carrying perfection all along and didn’t know it. I know I didn’t but thanks for ushering the path to the unknown. I’ve made discoveries along the way about myself that sums up to a complete zero if not for you. Without you to share things with, some things are just a complete waste of time. There really is nothing so special about looking at a sun disappearing behind the mountains on a near evening setting. These occurrences happen every day. Nothing is so passé as watching it again and again, that is if you have lived long enough like I do (at least that’s how I feel like). But with you, somehow, this average everyday happening becomes the "embracing warmth of twilight mixed with cooling wonder of the enveloping black night". You were there with me. It didn’t matter where we were to view it. You were there. That made the difference and somehow made that infamous place wonderful. Because I was there and so were you. We even took pictures of the sight like as if a glossy paper with colors on it can contain the depth of the love that we have shared, the magic of laughter we have exchanged with each other, the torment and tragedies of the tears we have experienced, the thousand deaths we have lived through for each despair encountered and the hope of our winged hearts for our vision of the morrow. But we took pictures. We unbelievably share the passion for immortalizing the moments we deemed worthy to be called memories. We may not have discovered the full purpose of those pictures but we still have time. I always knew that you will always be there to give meaning to my monotonous existence. I have you and you have me. We have each other. We will so fondly reveal to ourselves its purpose in our own time. And like all things on this universe, it’ll be as special as our other mementos because we will be there sharing it like all the other little things in life which were made big because we are aware of the power we hold in our hearts. Because of you I feel loved, important, and powerful. Your love gives me power. I know I have never thanked you enough. Judging from your overall effect in my life, maybe, no words could suffice all my gratefulness to you. I could never thank you or love you enough. I could only try. And no matter what happens between us, I will never be whole without you and I will always love you. If only for loving you sustain me through the sadistic jokes of reality called living. I love you, my friend. You are my life.

bong, mommy zaida, me & gabe outside enjoying the festive new year air... 

NOW SHOWING: ANG MGA BABAE SA BUHAY NI DICK!  

family new year foto... couldn't get any better than this.. 

gabe and derek - the best of both worlds... (then again, that's still open for argument... i might be a little biased towards my brothers) 

family new year... happiness... 

unadulterated beauty. my baby andrea... 

tonight (12/28/04) reunion with college friends.... 

Xed - mas!

okay, so christmas is supposed to be the most meaningful holiday/holy day (and there's nothing wrong with that coz this world needs a lot of meaning...) but why do people have the compulsion to tell others to be nice to people who you have been avoiding the whole year?

if you are a genuinely good person, that means you would've been friends with them even before christmas (and not wait for the end of the year)...

if you have been avoiding them the whole year that just mean one thing - there's no way you want to be near these people, not even on christmas...

i thought people value honesty (translation: i don't like those people!) & they want people to be real (translation: this is me. i'm a biyatch. accept that and be my friend or get out of the fvck*ng way!)

people around are flashing their smiles to people they wanted dead from january to november...

they act as if christmas will never be complete if they will not become fake, plastic carricatures of their original beings....

in this alternate reality, christmas has become a necessary evil. if only to remind humanity that the only thing keeping us from ripping each other apart is hypocrisy...

try to be happy this christmas...

but above all be real....

be you...

ballad

Clutching the body

Half- alive, half - dead

Striving to recollect

Broken pieces

Of a pride and life

What has been

A lonely struggle

The futile strife

Half a dream

Over a millionSuffering,

tormented

Marred soul

Destroyed,

disfigured

Rejected,

humiliated

Being Alienated,

a derelict

Indifferent now

Unmoved,

unknown

Hope vanished,

stolen

Faith - lost

In agony

Cold

Alone.

ballad of the mistrel man

Sometimes, in my overwakefulness, dreams come to me in guises of reality. It is in not sleeping that I find myself sinking in the quagmire of an even deeper dream. In times of living color, of vivid reality, I wallow in an all too familiar black pit devoid of light. It is in my aloneness that I drown in noise that my ears fail to perceive - of moans, of tortured suffering, of spiritual anguish and emotional despair. In times when I find myself in the midst of friends and relatives, I find myself shivering of cold, being drawn into that desolate chasm - falling, alienated, alone. The comfort offered by everyday domestic luxuries pierce my body with venomous thorns making me bleed and writhe in pain. I derive ridicule in praise. People’s assurance and laughter deafens me - grabs my heart from my breast and crushes it. Their comforting wisdom and guidance cripples my self-concept, thereby killing reason, and sits grinning in the funeral. Sanity is then frozen with their hypocritical warmth and then thawed by the scorched soul with blistering heat while being thrown in the funeral pyre.
I futily sleep to wake-up from this nightmare - only to wake-up after and taste death in the dreams of the overwakefulness of life.
“Et clamor meus ad te veniat…”

swansong

There was a point in my life when no one could be happier than I. At that time, it seemed that nothing mattered anymore. No one mattered anymore. It was when time and space mingled into an inconceivable blur. The chaos of the outside world blended in the background. It lost its weight, its impact. It was as if all I ever wished since childhood came true. Everything I ever needed materialized into one absolute happy package and I had it all. Everything was perfect. Everything was too good to be true.It probably was. Now, I can’t think of anything besides farewell. I didn’t regret it though. In fact, If I have to relive my life again, I would relive that moment. No ifs, no buts. That time was a definite all time high in my “so called life”. But no matter how much I try so hard to rekindle the passion, the flame is just isn’t there anymore. Maybe it was the countless realizations along the way. Right now, I think of a lot of things. I think of joy, of sorrow, of passion, of lessons learned and everything in between. And yet no matter how many adjectives I try to apply to everything that happened before, I still am unable to utter a word. Because how do you say what you feel and not get hurt when nothing you could ever say is more appropriate than “goodbye?”

from tatay....

i miss my anak.
end.

my anak... new zealand boy now... 

my bestfriend ivy with daughter thea & son (my godson) gil daniel (from new zealand) - well missed.... 

at a videoke bar the midnight following the wedding