No Smoking Joint

Smog-Free. Shiny-White. Clean Lungs.

That night he dreamt of her.

In the dream they were in an argument. She said she was leaving.

At first, he believed her. But there were qualms in his head needed to be quelled. Whatever that was bothering him, it didn’t materialize. It was just there, trapped in the black hole of sleep. He was merely looking at her as if they were worlds apart. Their lips unmoving, but their mind frequencies sparked like lovers on a boat. An exchange of thoughts. A bartering of affections that did not breach the chords of speech.

four-pages and three-thousand words and still stumped on how to exact a proper finale.

five posts a year was not exactly what i intended to do with a blog i started close to seven years ago.

at that time, i was an idealist---thinking i could somehow chronicle my experiences on a daily basis---and a some sort of outlet blossomed on the nook and cranny of the cyberspace.

it was a blog that i had to delete and redo. a reconstruction that came, coincidentally, with my own. a few posts here and there, scraps of mundane phrases and the nonsensical, fused together on the demand of a constant update.

i did not realize that as world turns, lives change, even what was cool then---slowly drifted into what is passe. the black now turned grey.

nonetheless, i will to try to keep up.

maybe it would be a resolution that meant to be broken. who knows. and resolutions are actually on the similar path than that of technology--they go into a different direction and begin an unexpected transformation. it might not be the thing one would hopefully anticipate, but, there should (and most probably will) be a positive outcome in its temporary finality.

so, i guess the coming year might call for a new makeover.

for whatever reason, i did not notice that the graphic header of my blog suddenly disappeared. i assumed it was caused by a browser upgrade (really. that was the only thing that factored in, since i could not recall doing anything [except maybe for the permissions verification/repair, but that would not in anyway, cause a CSS error]).

...you know, like a story trapped. waiting for the pen.

but i smiled and he flinched. and an automatic response to a hackneyed query. 

"i'm good." 

you know, the mechanics of American goodwill starts with the obligatory phrase. soon, you would not realize the exact reason for doing so, except it was contagious. that it would become a staple in a language you would be constrained to inculcate. 

"then why are you smiling?" he asked me. noticed a stifle of laugh, and i thought this guy must be a nutcase. a person with an untightened screw. or needed little lubrication. then, he proceeded on a litany that only Soren Kierkegaard or Immanuel Kant would articulately attempt to evoke. the finicky profundities of life and the motors that influenced its precarious traverses. 

my reply was a mere shrug. he repeated something. 

"when you said you're good--it is because you feel good. not because it was the only right thing to say. people don't contribute to the overall atmosphere of your day. you create it. you make your own happiness." 

when he paused. i knew it would be followed by another kernel of his loose-screwed wisdom. "what makes you happy?" 

i was the one that flinched at this retort. i stood there, uncertain. the uncertainty came from the choice of words. of what the right answer would be. 

"you see, the universal response we get is our jobs, of getting what we want. but it is the immaterial things we neglect to recognize." i suspected that he might be trying to convince me of something. a method of persuasion by going through personal transparencies. 

after all, he made sense. 

but before i left, i made a rapid glance at him. he sat there on a lonely outpost of a deserted concourse in early morning, waiting for something. or someone he could impart a smudge of his brain's accretions. 

at the end of the world. where i think his happiness dwells. 

one of my weaknesses is expressing myself in English. verbally. 

perhaps it can be attributed to my lack of social skill. or anything anthropological. a deficiency I must have acquired after i mushroomed into this world, and derailed a certain aspect of my development.

they say that personal growth is complemented by his/her environs. whatever the society would rear into who you become, it still deserts a minor part of it. however as i trudge on my comfort zone as if it is the 38th Parallel, the dichotomy between my ability to interact and my verbally-limited vocabulary somehow wades on such scarcity. 

what was surprising, in spite of all, was that people see me as rather different. kind of discerning, actually. well, I would probably attest that as being a Filipino in a foreign territory gives you a minute sense of diversity. a racial minority whose percentage rarely equals, as the Beatles would have put it, "the holes to fill the Albert Hall". 

i remember a particular instance in college, more than a decade back. one of my major communications course required us to prepare an oral analysis of what our topic was at that point (what that specific topic was, i could not recall). the professor made us a deal: whoever wanted to go first, can throw the bricks and leave. as simple as that. make yourself heard, get a grade (a guaranteed passing one, he said), and take your early break. as each student stood up, depleted the can. i was aware of the need. but dire, it was not. so i took my time.

a highschool friend once said, "if you want to speak/talk English, you have to think English". i know it's easy for someone to say, especially if their household vernacular does not stray into the pages of a Balagtas novel nor an issue of Funny Komiks. i was somewhat astonished to discover that my preference for a college major settled on a subject that would entail a viva voce ability in that particular language. 

but as far as scribbling my thoughts on paper, i guess the rhetoric is almost, well, apparent. although, i admit that occasionally i am at difficulty in avoiding grammatical solecisms. but as what i had written before, it is the process that makes it all fun. nonetheless, to be understood is perhaps the ultimate objective. and one does not have to employ an ostentatious command of the language for him to be able to convey the message.