My Life of Pi

I have a severed relation with your numbers and equations

Not that I hate you, Math. Actually, right now I think, I’m starting to like Stats

But the problem is, you see, the flair I have for words does not come out easily (if at all)

when I am face to face with decimal points, integers, and multiplication of fractions

Believe me, I tried for so many times

And for so many times I cried, trying to find whatever are the values of x and y

Why are those values almost always missing in the first place?

I mean, I tried so hard to understand

Why, there are far too many digits in one solution

Why, too many problems demand division or multiplication

But I only get hot tears, beads of sweat, fiddling fingers, torn out papers

Until I mastered the art of crawling out to the backdoor of a classroom,

like a lone soldier crouching over to spare himself from the ranging bullets that are prime

numbers.

I’m sorry. I have grown used to using letters only for words, not for finding variables

I have learned what is meant by "reading between the lines,"

I’m not used to drawing one to plot out coefficient and correlation

I’m trying to think of you now as a man, who for so long have courted me for my attention

But who would always find me busy, engaged to rhymes and poems not to formula or theorems

So, thank you, for coming by again, and for this last time let us try

to get to know each other, one formula after another

And maybe, just maybe, thereafter, I will no longer have to barrel through life

without ever really knowing what a square root is for.

***

 wind 8/7/14

5.40 PM

I'm no longer a teenager, but this is still how i do Math. :(

The Stranger

The most painful thing a person can ever feel, apart from losing a loved one from a timid disease, is to lose another one from the flow of that loved one’s own thoughts, and into the land of indecision. It crushes your dreams, your hopes, the ones you thought you both had from the very start only to find out, in the middle of flailing words and sweet exchanges that it was only you dreaming these dreams, holding onto the same hopes.

While we can say that every individual has distinct aspirations and values they live by, it is hard not to hope that someday, somewhere, some angels will fly and glue those little pieces of differences over their heads  and made these into ribbon sheets of endless love stories.

Once there was a man, high-spirited, confident, the epitome of passion and self-direction.  He was not happy, but neither was he sad. He’s “just fine,” or so he said. Then came a girl, curious and stubborn, who would always ask him questions, determined to learn how she could be the self-sufficient person the man seemed to her.

I found this word somewhere—“Self-efficacy”—it means being able to do what you had set out to do, or being able to be the person you had set out to be. I should have told him this term then, because he was, to me, the walking meaning of the word.

He could be a writer, a musician, a mentor, a film director, a debater, a painter, a dog-whisperer, and many other things he set out himself to be. In the midst of what I treated a professional crisis, he smirked at my lack of plans and clear direction. He makes litany of how one idea is wasted if it is not followed through with action, how seemingly reachable goal can’t just be knocking at your door, and how I should endure and persevere until I am where I want to be. I have gotten used to watching him and listening to him intently while he tells of the hardships he had come to surpassed or the successes he sees for himself to achieve while we stand outside the platform of the MRT.

I knew right then, I was a fan. I cannot tell about myself as much as I can tell about him; what he do, what he likes doing, what his passions are. I know what makes him cry, I know what makes him smile. I can make him smile.

I know this man with all my heart. Until one night, a different guy showed up. At first I thought he was the same man. He had the same smile, the same intellect I have always admired. He strides the way my man would. He also liked strawberry and tea. Yet there was something really different about this guy. Behind his smile I could see he was in deep thought. He was seated across me but it was as if he was not there. The eyes, which used to glare with passion, were blanked. The hands which I used to hold for strength and support were fumbling over spoon and fork. The guy, who looks like the man I used to ask for decision, was not even sure what he wants for dinner. This stranger asked me what he should do with his life. I shuddered.

I don’t know what I did or did not do how the man I used to know ever get to slipped away before my eyes and be replaced by this stranger seated in front of me. I don’t know this guy— this guy who said he doesn’t know what he will do with his life. Who told me we cannot get all the things we want in life; who thinks of planning as compromise, who thinks that life is run by instinct; that love and concern will look after themselves when whims are followed first; the guy who cannot share his mind because he thinks I would not understand. I could not blame him. I really would not understand.

I wonder, at what point had this stranger could have possibly took possession of my man. I think I had been so full of myself that I did not notice my man slipping away from my fingertips. That by and by, he was losing his soul or whatever it was he used to have before, that made him so strong.

I am well aware the man I used to know was not superman. He could get hurt, frustrated, irated by little acts of negligence. But I was sure he was a man—who was not allergic to the word “plan” who thinks of others before himself, who wakes up every morning with things to accomplish and get these accomplished.  And he was not the boy who sits small in front of me, in the corner of a green couch in the upstairs of a mall, who was torn between hash brown or mashed potato.    

If ever I’ll meet with that stranger again, I will ask him to tell my man I missed him and urge him to come back home to me, and live the life we used to oversee from the cold steel grills outside the platform of the MRT.

“Someone has to be the bitch so someone else gets to be the nice one.  Someone has to be one who pushes so someone else gets to be the one to take it easy. Someone has to be driven so someone else can take their time and figure things out and follow their bliss.”

– Rise & Shine, A. Quindlen

May 26, 2014

2.37PM

Blink

When a man is busy, he really is busy

He could not text, he could not call

Said he could not even get hold of his cellphone

You, woman, fiddle your phone

wait for him to drop by a tone

But, yes, you princess, would not either ring him on your own

When he is busy, he really is

Fills up the day away without checking if you are okay

Drinks too much caffeine, complains of migraine

stays away watching movies, writing stories

You, woman, stumbles in bed

Throwing pillows over your head

You could not sleep, you could not eat

wondering: Had he been dead?

In the morning, your phone will ring

The blinking screen light tells you it is him

You armor up, ready to freak out

but then he says,

                “Sorry, Love, it had just not been a good day,”

What else is there to say? 

wind 

4.21.2014/ 2.21PM

Mr. Pink

She slipped in her black neoprene shirt, ready to take on the sun and bring on the dirt

The stammering sea sings as she waddles up to its knees then, to its shore and back again

Before then, she was on land playing sand, lying face down on a banana leaf-looking board

Crouching, bending, balancing on the flat bed shore

Came Mr. Pink, the dark canny little man, with pink eyeglass, pink rashguard, and pink sunblock cream permeating his nose and bony cheeks

He looks like a little boy who played with his sister’s pink make up set

He grins his crooked grin, tells her she’d do away with him

Never mind that this is only her second try,

Never mind either that her sunscreen dabs her already misty eye

Mr. Pink exclaims when she tells him she could not swim, but tells her it’s gonna be okay,

there seems to be no other way anyway

The first swell had better tell, she would not get any farther,

Not farther from the shore, never farther from the ocean’s last curl

But look there! She goes, arms stretched out to the wind, knees wobbling in disarray

Riding on the gravity, standing on both feet, spine in awkward stretch

Hands flair open as if to say, “look here! I’m gliding on the water and the air!”

Mr. Pink,  dripping in his pink rashguard and pink eyeglass, his pink sun block now awashed from his face, raises a fist to her with one thumb tucked out in the open air.

the infamous Mr. Pink

Wind

4/10/2014; 11:10 AM 

IFs

If I could leave today I would

I’ll be at the peak of the mountain sitting by the edge of a cliff,

shouting my lungs out in the vast horizon of the lake overview

casting questions like what, how, and why.

Why me? “Why not?” should not be the next.  

If I could leave today

I’ll be out the streets wearing shorts and sneakers

scourging every nook and cranny for a story that needs telling

If I could leave today

I’ll be in a white room telling yore,

With blotting marker and tainted whiteboard,

drawing lines, drawing words, weaving stories

Telling these to little ears

If I could leave today I would

I’ll be out the door and will never come back,

Never again in the chair that never felt like mine,

 Never in the bricked floor that seems to say, “bore”

If I could leave today, I would

There’s just no point in staying

There is no use in waiting

You’re only wasting your time, wasting theirs, wasting days

Because you know, there is really no point in staying

If I could leave today

Why not?   

wind 

4/10/14

The Chronicle's End

“We’ve been trying,” he said in an almost inaudible voice that sounded to me as a hush, “to extend this since December,” but apparently to no avail.

 

The news came down to us roiling like raindrops from a thundercloud overhead that we know had been there all the while. We’ve seen this coming, only we could not tell when and what to do after.

And in one gloomy day, it all poured down upon us. From trickles, words came dropping one after another, whizzing pass us, piercing through our skin no matter how carefully uttered.  It was cold. We were still, cold and damp, mouths agape while struggling to find the right face.  

Should we smile because finally the days of uncertainties are over? That finally we are freed from the jail of dependence and handed-over convenience? Or should we tear because all of these, freely and cheerily given to you once before, are now taken back for good?

A cornucopia of emotions is starting to boil over. But there was no flower, nor fruit, only the goat’s face and his horn; his eyes jerking at me with mockery and disdain: “You wanted this all along, didn’t you?” he said. I wanted to say yes, but no, not right then.

Not at the moment when I see our big man’s face flushing, eyes welling damp that seems to me like crying. Not at the moment when I see him commanding back what seems to me like tears if not care or worries. 

Then, it was over. Our silent mouths were further sealed, greased by the oil from roasted pig and glass noodles.    

   

By and by, the sphere turned, it turned fast and faster until I could no longer breathe any more air. Suddenly, I found myself out somewhere, in the middle of bustling folks and bulging trains, caught in the kissing bumpers and struggling lingerers. I was on my feet, ready to run, to go hide and burrow my face in the comfort of homey solace. But I pushed back. I pulled myself together, my bed sheets, undone like since forever, I left them all behind.   

There is no recourse for the lazy, no resolve for the small and the needy. Every night, as like every morning then after, brings with it an ill temper and dying demurer and  right then, my memory takes me back to where I used to be—in my silent nook, brightly lit by prickly sun, decorated by moving wheels and metal bars.  I miss my drawers and the cockroaches that live with it. I miss the oven and the fridge; the silent room and doorman. 

Now, in the middle of the somewhere I found myself in are tales of endless dread, full of dark tangible proofs of the ‘would be’. I’m keeping my ground though. I’m soldiering on.  

Or at least, I’m trying. 

- Wind , 1.30.14/ 4.00PM

 

Bipolar irritability by E. Martin

"I broke the windshield.

Of my blue Scion.

Because I got in a fight with my boyfriend on the phone and threw the cell at the windshield.

The thing that gets left out sometimes about bipolar disorder is the irritability. For me, it was an enormous thundercloud that appeared out of nowhere. Loud. Destructive. I could be fine for days and then the smallest thing would set me off and I would become this “Other Me,” this me who destroyed things with her words or actions. I’d say things I didn’t really mean, not things I would say, but it was like someone else had control of my tongue and throat and lips.

I’ve spent a lot of time apologizing for those words, sometimes on deaf ears. Sometimes enough is enough is enough of me and my thundercloud.

But my windshield got replaced two years ago. I, of course, paid for it. I deserved to pay for it. I broke it. I fixed it. And those crazy outbursts have stopped. I don’t remember the last time the “Other Me” came out.

Sometimes mania manifests as irritability. When I am manic everything is good at first, heck, it’s damn near perfect. I am beautiful and the world is beautiful and you are beautiful and I can do anything. But then, that sun that felt so good on my face becomes unbearably hot, and those stars that dazzled me make me feel too small. And it’s all too much.

And the cotton fabric of my hoodie itches.

And the words you say aren’t the right ones.

And here comes that thundercloud – loud and destructive.

I wish people knew, “normal people” knew, that we don’t mean to be abrasive or hot-tempered. It is part of our illness. There is all this energy bubbling under our skin and when the conditions aren’t just right, just perfect, it comes out in a lightning bolt.

Like I said, that windshield got replaced and amends were made and I sit here today at this keyboard and wonder who that woman was, who she is. Because she is under there somewhere, just waiting for the right conditions to form a storm."

*1.39AM. I need help. Nobody understands. Nobody cares to.