no master planner

graduation dusk with Chai, while she cries and asks the world to know that her curls are hers and hers to wear, beauty like no disappointed father can change, beauty like no white or beige dress can surpass -- photo by Ivi, 2006

Graduation was when? May? April? Suddenly hurled to this they call the corporate world where I sit and escape to mp3s of poetry and Nouvelle singing about how she danced in Tokyo and London, would have invited the world to dance with her, 'there's nothing to lose, and there's nothing to prove, so I'm dancing with myself,' oh so beautiful words, and I try to look for my own reflection in the mirror, mirroring her, imagining perhaps a new pair of dancing shoes, a pair that I can use while running away from here, from this perks-laden office, away from the airconditioning and out in the sun, out in the pedestrian lane where drivers care not to stop even if I cross hastily in my black top. Is this my one year ticket? May? April? I have to wait a year, little plans for me, little plans because I have to be this or that, and what else? Oh, I have to fix myself up in every corner because that's what I'm supposed to do, comb my hair, even wear my Sunday's best, and then kneel or pray for a great job, light that solitary candle and clasp my hands together, ask for guidance because I am no master planner.

Pat once told me how beautiful it is to say you're afraid. I'm afraid.. and wrecked, and ugly.

Pure? Not pure. Muddy. Blurred. Hazy. All the other descriptions for that feeling of your ride with beautiful ICTbuildings which you pass by every morning, almost always looming bigger and bigger each day, and you feeling not necessarily smaller but definitely displaced, displaced and ugly and soaked. What is purity anyway?

If Russ died in my arms or in front of me while he jumps off a building or while he pulls the trigger of a gun that materializes out of nowhere -- wonderful tricks outside my office table or in Russ' red room, oh-so-beautiful red -- will I carry him off to an outer world where there is no you, no me, no crazy nights of beer and margarita mixed amidst percussions and silly halloween costumes, or will I slump and cry until everything is lost for us. Purity, tears, all the shit and sadness glued in a canvas where five names are written in haste, as if inked by shame and guilt, shame and guilt because of the love I have for them, shame and guilt for the love that evades me in my 'roomless' home. Sad, sad souls drunk with nights of talks and curses and dreams of foreign places, a sympathetic world big and strong enough to carry angry hearts, bruised, sad, heavy, and sleepy.