House of Memory

Not so long ago, a man died in our neighborhood much to everyone's surprise. I was on my usual setup– tapping and clicking, and despite the slurring noises outside our home slowly building up like a wildfire, I did not dare to get an eyeful of the situation. However, last Tuesday, around 3 am in the morning, we were awaken by a howling of a man. It was so loud and woeful that I could not breathe the moment I opened my eyes, I felt like I was being strangled to death as I could taste the sorrow in his voice while he was crying out. Tulong! Tulong! Tulooong! He kept bawling these words repeatedly and it felt so close to my ears even he was there outside. I did not get up as soon as I came back to my senses, I was too afraid of what I might see once I look over the window. What if he was being murdered on that spot? And someone saw me watching over with such burning curiosity? What if they shoot me without a skip and I'll be dead? No, I was not being paranoid just because I woke u

There's someone died in our neighborhood. It was all too sudden. I didn't know him and most likely so was he to me. But not's the story about. It was supposed to be the usual face in our neighborhood where summer energy was on its peak. Everyone was on their spot fanning away their seasonal outburst of grumpiness towards the heat while kids were at their own phase, absorbed and oblivious to any kind of inconvenience. I was also planted to my seat and doing my actual task of listening to a podcast. I was absorbed too but still grounded to the other noises polluting the surrounding. Then I heard a few people panicking about something, the air seemed like it turned dry and heartstopping, and distant voices were trying to reach out something I couldn't make out. But given the jostling nature of our street, I was made to believe that nothing serious happened at that brief moment, like it was just a loud and confused noise and there's nothing worthy from it that I had to

There's a reason why, for the first time in a very long while, I have to post something here on my account. Doing this so, I expect that this would reach that particular person whom this post is for. Perhaps people would consider the thought of me confronting the person involved through a personal message instead of making him like a blind item like this, however, he has gone extreme already– beyond what I could imagine, and not naming him is my way of dismissing his existence because a person like him doesn't deserve to be called by his name, but with names like HYPOCRITE, COWARD, AND TRASH. Yesterday, I was greeted by Mama's puffy eyes as she went home from her duty in barangay. I thought it was a usual day for her, but when she went to me fighting off that weep of tears in her eyes... I almost cried. She told me about this person who, for more than a year already, has been targeting her with sexist and rude remarks. I tried to brush it off as I thought "What can I

There's an already familiar noise that has significantly been a part of my every day while I am on my usual work-from-home setup. Sitting on my spot by the window, while my eyes are fixated at the screen, I could imagine the afternoon face of our neighborhood just by consciously reaching its cacophonies: Kids shrilling while the sound of their chasing echoes with their bodies. Engines puffing their breaths roughly on the road. The heavy sound of trains. Scattered voices— some fading in the background, while others resonate its way across our street, trying to win subconsciously one another. With this commotion, seems there's one noise that has completely been bothering me more than it pampers me. Just before the daylight patiently fades away from the view, there's a loud music that being played pretentiously almost every day—   punching its beats against the speaker almost unbearable to listen to. At those times, how I wish they would play much often music that lu

People believe that I am a studious person. But, actually, I am NOT —  at least not consistently.   Even myself could not quite grasp the idea why I am being viewed as that. Not that I am not grateful for that perspective, but somehow as I grew up I learn to take receipt of other's compliment where it is due so if it's not...I usually shrug it off cause I could not labor myself under that misapprehension.  Of course, everyone wants at least somebody's soft words.  However, in my case, people especially in our neighborhood have been loosely seeing me throughout my growing years as a bespectacled studious kid...which I thought is weird. Admittedly,   I was that kid whose normal eyesight had lost somewhere in her sophomore year for an I-don't-know reason but I was definitely NOT that kid (who might have been living in their head) who had to afford a pair of glasses because her vision could not handle anymore her immense intelligence that people believed she had.  To set a

If I was still on my first grade and you'll ask me which fruit is my favorite, then very likely I would answer it without giving much conscious thought.  Star Apple . I used to have a small voice when I was on my first grade (Not that I don't have it anymore, but somehow, it has gotten improved through the years of trying) I could still call to mind how I was being scolded by my homeroom teacher for being so bashful whenever she was asking me to read something for the class.  They can't hear me.  But I can hear myself...my thoughts, and how my heart was skipping beats whenever I can feel their eyes at me.  And they were trying to stifle their giggle under their breath when our homeroom teacher patiently told me if I can even hear my own voice. They had no idea. That's what I thought.  If only they knew that at those moments I was like hovering between life and death, and I was trying my very best to calm my throat so I could gather my escaping voice and let it out. But

Widespread electric power outages, comfortably called brownout rather than blackout here in Manila (or perhaps in other places as well) had never been, even once, an inconvenience to the eyes of a small child. As for me, it was the freedom. One of the acmes, if not the acme, of our childhood memories.  Brownout— with such a lavish stress in B and R while the rest of the letters delivered, seemingly, in an almost easy and negligible manner— was once to me a cherished occurrence and an invitingly comfortable interruption. And whenever I picture out our experience during brownout in retrospection, I always recall our world shutting off and we could see nothing but a spooky sight of jet-black emptiness mottled with white flashlights. Then, our street would materialize into a candle-lit pavement instinct then with passionate breaths. Through my eyes, there was a familiar twinkle of candles dancing among the absences of light. Mosquitoes would rise to clamor, leaping playfully its weight in

[WARNING: A LONG AND DRAMATIC POST] A pretty reasonable estimate seems to me that if you have seen me strolling in a public place wearing this eyeglasses, there's at least a higher chance I am in the mood of not seeing the world in a blurry perspective. That is why, I guess, I was sentimental last Thursday. It was a typical day, the likes when I am in my usual tendency of not looking forward to anything any longer because life for awhile has become steadily somber to me. That day, I was doing my usual click and tap routine in my work, but due to that unwelcome phenomenon which is called "poor connection", my stormy temperament accidentally broke the frame of my eyeglasses when I took it off. I mumbled out a barely conscious DAMMIT WHY IT HAS TO BE TODAY? as I was trying not to let the horror overcome me at another ghastly view of the lens that has just popped out on its frame. I can still feel the tears sitting on the corner of my eyes. This eyeglasses has seen me off to

Rose-colored Boy I bet that everybody has probably mastered the art of fake happiness. The world, as by people perceive,  only admits a lapse of happiness and nothing else beyond. We keep chasing an illusion that we've been made to believe is really out there: Happiness.  Happiness has never been a strange idea for anyone. When we are asked about our ideas of what happiness is, we tend to overplay it with some little triumphs of rhetoric. We cling on the idea that happiness is the concept of what is perfect in the complexities of human emotion. And the passage of three years doesn't cost me that much to lose track of what happened in one of the normal days in my high school. It was my English teacher who had this lavish obsession at her own jest. But a snap of her tale on that day was already enough to get the attention of this student sitting on the last seat of the last row. It seems that she launched an arrow straight on my spot and have made my repressing yawns turned into