There are people whose frames seem to droop, however which way they shift, and carry, their weight. It's as if the eyes are perennially searching for the ground, or some place close to it; the mouth is fixed in a frown that has a mark of semi-permanence about it, adding a stratum of sadness to a countenance already doleful. Is it a passing grief, some enduring heartache, or some constant solitariness? One may never know, unless the courage to approach and the patience to dig unearths for one an answer. And the answer may well be another trench of more questions, more speculations.

A look upwards, toward a sunlit sky, perhaps, and a breath of fragrant, greens-and-blooms-kissed air, should lighten the encumbrance, a little bit at a time, and then a bit more, until the shoulders inspire themselves to straighten up, the eyes tire of the browns and the grays, and the mouth curls up into the beginnings of a smile, one that will keep coming back, again, and again, until the heart to make it stay finally makes it stay.

Mooning over this cup of coffee

The interminable tapeworm of time unreels
unwinds and stops dead.
-Ophelia Alcantara Dimalanta, "The Time Factor"

Where he is, my dad is currently building his fish pond. Miles away, sun-lovers are frolicking on beaches. Sundry, unknown distances separate me from the bibliophile chewing away at his book with a cup of coffee; from the little ones having snacks of milk and cookies; from the corporate dweller crunching away at data and gossip; from the mountain-climber trekking, inhaling the breeze of the outdoors. A butterfly is cooing, soundlessly, at a newly-opened blossom, and a puppy barks at a yellow moth, flitting by.

I wonder what twilight is like in other places. Where I am, and in the places I've been, it is almost always sad.

What's it like, where you are?

How your day was

The tumult in the heart
keeps asking questions. 
-Elizabeth Bishop, "Conversation"-

The mirror throws back a child's face, the only tell-tale windows of sadness and years, the tired eyes. What a relief it is to lie down and stretch the legs, to move the toes that for hours and hours had been confined in the narrow, triangular concaves of the three-inch stilettos you knew had been a mistake, not when you knew the extent of wandering that was to come when you slipped into them yesterday. But now, it's the evening after the day of that afternoon and the body lies supine on a soft, familiar bed--because there often is softness in the familiar--even as streams of the last nineteen hours' sundry conversations still intersect in your head and the approaching twilight shows little promise of a peaceful night. In your head, too, the lines of a song weave themselves into the lines of a poem, and you become the "you" in the song, and one of everyone else in the poem. You, walking, and the memory of aimlessness, the aimlessness of your  feet as they took a path that led nowhere that you wanted to believe was somewhere, and that did take you somewhere: you, alone, there, somewhere. And, finally, as the day finds its end: you, here, somewhere, and somewhere else.

Browsing...

How cheerless are these lines?

The rain is falling and it is awfully dark outside. It’s two forty in the afternoon and yet it seems like twilight. There is a congruence to the words twilight and gloom.
Loneliness is a terrible thing. It makes the soul shrink unto itself, like there’s nowhere else to go except inwards, and one does not know what one will find there. Lonely. There is a sense of finality in the letters, as if there is nothing in between them, not even shadows. Just nothing. (July, '05)

or these:

But loneliness. It is twilight, and then the darkness that comes after twilight. It goes away, but is certain to come back. Daylight obscures it, but only for so long.
It is part of, if not the, landscape.
Loneliness, I have to confess, has become one of my favorite words.(July, '05)

Even the description of Maria Callas' singing does not escape the dismals:

...and yet, ultimately, its greatest achievement is that it is able to touch the core of one’s humanity, to stir dormant feelings of sadness, whose cause one can’t seem to trace, exactly. It is, I believe, the primeval sense of loneliness that lives in each of us, and it is this that “La Mamma Morta” gropes around for, and then raises for us to see, if not to acknowledge. (July, '07)

And then add this to the dreariness:

I have long ago taught myself, little by little, to close myself into a bud whenever I feel the threat of pain. (July, '07)

But wait, there's more:

We feel the gargantuan pain (and we're talking physical pain) shooting up from the chest to the throat and we push, push it downwards so that the effort makes breathing difficult that tears start to well up in the eyes. But we don't stop until we know for sure that we've dug deep enough to bury the scream. And, with it, the pain. (January, '08)

Sheesh. I'm glad to have outgrown those.

Or, I hope I have.

The Eighties

Sunday afternoon, a drive down a busy street. Fussing with the car tuner and chancing upon John Parr's "St. Elmo's Fire", with David Foster's "Just For A Moment" and Joey Scarbury's "Believe It or Not" in tow.

So eighties.

So long ago.

It was a senti moment right there for M-- and I. M--, by the way, is an 80s' baby, like me, so we were able to go down childhood lane together. The songs touched chords in our psyches and there were moments of quiet (both of us, I guess, remembering lazy afternoons, drowsy hometowns and orange twilights), peppered with small, low conversations on how the songs reminded us of our childhoods, to the loss of innocence where one became forced to say hello to gray twilights and life's dead ends.

"Wasn't there a time in our young lives when we believed in something?"

"Ya."

"When we believed in forever and the goodness in people and in hopes of bright tomorrows?"

"From that point to where we are now--it's like having gone a hundred-eighty-degree turn."

How right he was. How right. Such a cynical generation it was we belonged to.
Sad.

Twinklings

Today, someone told me: it's not the breath you take every moment, but the moments that take your breath away. I'm not quite sure I got that right, but it's a beautiful thought, nevertheless.

There's a fairy tale-ish element in those lovely, ephemeral three winks when you simply have to gasp (in awe, amazement, or pleasure), that stay with you long after they're over, sights as simple as:

a scarlet bloom amidst luxurious green;

the twilit sky, bursting into orange and red, with velvet, ashen evening in the background, ready to wrap the world in its gigantic embrace;

a child's wide-eyed and toothy smile, full of joy and trust;

that of you, walking back home and laughing at that most recent, silly moment, your hair blowing and your chuckle floating in the afternoon breeze...

May you have one such moment today.
Have a great weekend!