The Eagle is grounded, not landed…

It has been ages since I traveled, and as a seasoned traveler, I feel weirded out I am not so excited riding an airplane. Maybe because I work and worked at the airport, and my old job required me to even take command grounded airplanes and inspect them when they landed. Maybe because simply my soul is unsettled; my footing is so loose I do not have enough push in my legs to throw myself off the ground. If there is one thing my family thought me, it was to be rooted and to have wings. To know where I come from, acknowledge my nature and my values, as well as realize who I am and what I represent, to also be free, and spirited, and dreamy, to bend the rules and break the barriers down. These constituted the core values my parents taught me during my comparatively short home life. I was always labeled the strong one; the chick with the potential to make monster updrafts and fly away; to command my destiny and conquer the skies. And yet, here I am, moving up the corporate ladder, living the dream to finally fly out, if only for the meantime, and yet, and yet… actually am reluctant. My legs feel more like dead weight; the hesitation is troubling me the most, mind you. Because if there was one thing I remember doing for the most part of my life, if there was a ride, any ride, to anywhere, I would take it. It always meant either endearing adventures that fill memories with nostalgia or would lead to epic failures of both the spirit and the heart. The latter never stopped me, because as the perpetual optimist and the romantic visionary, I never found the need to really hold back. But why now, when I do need to break away, to keep distance, yearning to observe from afar, when I have a reason to fly, I decide to stay here. What is holding me back? What, for the love of God, is making this explorer stay put?
The broken savvy of street smarts, of keen cultural imperceptions, of natural misdirection, of the natural born traveler with a penchant for misdemeanor, is reluctant about moving forward? Why? The hours are counting down and I am as curious as ever. What am I dead in my tracks? Why am I actually stepping from the road dreamed traveled and taking the gravelly, dirty and outmoded route? Maybe because there is the need to get dirty, to relearn to walk before relearning how to fly, or simply, maybe, there is no need to travel for the meantime.
IS stopping bad?

How Far Will Your Tracks Take You?

The wall clock’s arms before the two-way escalator downwards read ten forty five. There were just a few of us finding our way to the tracks at this hour. We walk slow as our footsteps echo and fill the air. There’s no one especially standing out in this group; there’s the old couple and the expectant mother by the women’s cart. There are what seem to be two brothers, drunk from either’s heartbreak. By the end there’s a student falling asleep, his head heavy and nodding downward. He looks like he’s in secondary school, by the familiar jacket he’s wearing. Beside him is an old man, who was all grey and despite looking like a shadow of his former self, had soulful eyes and the demeanor of an old military man. Before all of us, a middle-aged security officer with a brisk face paced while eyeing the yellow line he was trotting on, the markings on the line warned we shouldn’t cross. The station was filled with melancholy, either from the soulless aura the hour dictated, or due in part to the cold, October air rifting through the tracks. We all seemed to be attracted and affected by this impartial gloom taking hold of all of us. Waiting for the last train to the end of the line foreboded the same as well I guess. I watched the digital clock across on the other side dictate the time change slowly. The pale yellow digits gloat 10:50. Then 10:51. 10:52.

Five minutes of stillness. The jolly Christmas songs in the background didn’t matter either. The moment just glared like a gray snapshot, like a prolonged frame from an old episode of the Twilight Zone. I, of all people, was oddly the most entranced. I felt at ease. I felt at home. This moment was the fleeting feeling I was so akin to lately that simply disappeared. I missed this, being alone; being detached. It was filling up my dreary soul again, and that seemed highly euphoric. It’s been days since that incident but it already seems so long ago, putting me through so much and making me walk away with so little in heart but so much in hand. The quiet station seemed like the perfect haven for me. For the first time in a long time, I felt solitude again. I felt at ease. And I felt a lot better. I needed to recently. It was hard going through what I was. Remission is hellish, regardless of how you look at it.

My bout with cancer has been a long, thirteen years. My recent memory is filled with nothing but meds, injections, chemo, visits to hospitals, visits to churches, and made prayers. Of all the things that actually made me feel better, the last seemed to work the most. I am no saint, I’ll tell you that. I am not playing prodigal son to religion either, so out either surrender or guilt. Just the practice of saying and making prayers, of exhausting hopes, dreams, frustrations, to a being that didn’t talk back whatsoever, that made all the difference. And all that talking has made me hear better, listen better. They say having death knocking at the door changes people, maybe its fear, or remorse, or hope. But in reality all it makes people really do is appreciate today. And that is what I did. I enjoyed the waiting. I enjoyed seeing the train’s lone headlight glow increasing stronger as it came nearer. As the middle-most cart screeched to a halt in front of me, I enjoyed stepping into a nearly empty cart, save for the few others with last trips to make like me. I chose to stand by the door on the other side, the one opposite the tracks. I stared into the empty tracks, as the air conditioning seemed a lot more cooler than the morning, rush hour trains filled to the brim. The pitch black I was looking at turned into the city nightscape as the train started to move, illuminated by street signs and billboards. The quiet mood was disrupted by the train’s infomercials, annoying me to put my music player’s earphones on, not to drown out the noise with what music I could generate, but to serve as earplugs. I wanted to preserve this moment right here. This was the moment that helped me hear the replies to my aforementioned unanswered queries the most. In these moments, I heard the truth. I hear I am here for a reason. And these trains and their intersecting train tracks give me a way to explain what’s in my head.

You see, I’ve figured something from all the things I experienced in my short, 42 year old existence.  Our lives are exactly like these trains on these tracks. We can only have so much freedom after all. We do have the power to choose yes, but the choices we get, now that’s a different story altogether.

Being alone on a train, whether it’s the morning rush or the last trains in, make you experience a unique loneliness, one where you might say you feel regardless of being surround by a hundred commuters, or twelve. And this oddity leads you to contemplate are all these people really living relevant lives? Are they working to live their dreams? Are they raising a family, earning for school, a home, to see New York? Are they soulless, boring, cogs of the economic machinery? Are they living up to their potential? Are they making a living, or simply and honorably, making a life?

I’ve figured there are things bigger than us, like love, duty, and the greater good. However, we, as trains are all limited to the tracks laid out before us. We can hope all we want, but in reality we can only hope faith decides to open up new tracks for us, to expand our horizons for us. Everybody wants to go somewhere, and the reality is we are all lucky if we end up anywhere; but our decisions to go from point A to point B is all subjective to, yes, our decision to go, and a sadder yes, if we can actually traverse that path.

Now, if our route does expand, if opportunity to leave where you are arrives, are you ready? Will you brave it and cross tracks? The thing is the dreams or the lives we live are the trains, but we really are the train drivers. The tracks are the things bigger than us; the imperceptible overlords of our destinies. We, being small in nature and by that nature think small, forget the route and are shortsighted by who rides the trains with us. We forget our duties; we think of our family, our friends, our colleagues, our loves… We become so enthralled with who gets on and gets off our train we forget we are drivers; we miss the signs that the tracks have expanded and the new horizons are just waiting to be discovered, or sadly, we neglect to notice it’s the end of the line; the dead end is coming up. In the end, we can let these tracks limit us, or accepting these realities will free us. How can we be freed then? It’s simple; getting off the train, off the tracks. We must not let the bigger picture limit us but rather let the derailing free us.

We are all travelers. We all have a need to travel. We must understand we must not let the paths limit where we walk, roads limit where we drive, the seas limit our ships, or the skies limit our horizons. We must understand the need to travel is simply reflective of our need to search for something we are finding for. The realities of what we are searching for is another matter, and will require another train ride, so for this trip, let’s focus on this penchant to travel for the meantime. We must understand the need to travel is second only to the goal of the travel. We become so enamored, so engrossed with the dream we become exhausted during the journey and forget to enjoy the destination. We forget we worked hard, traveled far, and sacrificed something, for the intangible calmness of our souls. We become so tired from the journey we forget to see what is there but rather question why we went there in the first place. We become so fatigued from the pursuing of happiness we forget why we all run toward it anyway. We all do not want to wake up one day, scorned and battle-scarred, for nothing. We must take on any challenge, bask in every defeat, savor every victory, and cherish every love. We must live beyond these tracks, this controlling, contriving system that entraps us all to shallow and planned lives.

Now, the train slows as we near the last platform. The rest of my fellow passengers alight the train, and I decide to go out the last. As they pile up on the escalators on the way up, I look the other way, to the empty train. The driver comes out, and as he closes the cockpit, he leaves the train dreary and lifeless. It reinforces my belief the train is only a pod, a conduit, just like the tracks. The soul of every train system is the driver; how fast will the train go, until where will it run, and when will it reach the end. And that leads to another today, to tomorrow. Tomorrow may bring the same thing it bought today; existence, or something greater, transcendence. Now the real question is, what will your tomorrow bring? If new tracks come up, and if you can choose to take the new tracks, will you?

As for me? Absolutely no idea…

My Last Farewell

No more “what ifs?”
Got to deal with “what now?”
In the words of the great John Mayer, when you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.
The waking up everyday really is harder. The real hard part however, is moving on, is getting over Her. How could I? For the first time in my life, I was willing to be totally unselfish. I didn’t care what it’d cost loving her.
I was willing to give up anything and do everything for her.

What’s frustrating is everything reminds me of her. The apartment I’m in, the routes I walk to work everyday. How my phone used to light up from an SMS from her, the ping on my messenger tab to the right when she said “Hi”. The things I love, like anything Italian, Starbucks and coffee, dark chocolate, ice cream, cookies, and smiling, and of laughing at people, at situations, at life… all these things just remind me of her.

Obviously I am not doing any laughing right now. I feel numb and broken; my optimism, my youth, now restored, were again washed away under my feet, like the sand upturned when the new tide comes in.

Everyday without her is like a day without music… senseless.

I miss her voice. I miss her presence. I miss her a lot… I miss her bad.
The sad thing of course, like life, is reality takes its course. My suicide mission with a bunch of flowers in one hand and my heart in another just blew up in my face before I could get to Her.
I was undone before I even had a chance. I guess you Victor, were right all along. We did have an expiry date.
That sucks; that sucks a lot.
The worse part is the silence after, the ear-deafening stillness. The aftermath was brutal.

It’s hard when you are the one left hanging; the emotional amputee if you will.
Why is loving someone so goddamn exhausting?

Why, for the love of God, did I take this leap? Was it worth it? Are there regrets? Where do I go from here?
What happened to going to Italy together? To going to Baguio, or Pagudpod for the semester break? What happened to the inability of words to express her gratitude and appreciation? What in the world scared her?
What in the world did happen?
Well, nothing happened.
There were no words, no feelings of love to express, maybe because there was no love to begin with.
Ah, being run over by the truck driver…
The hurt is starting to come after all the numbness.
Fuck this feeling.

Whatever this was, whatever this cost me, was all worth it.
It was worth it being weak in front of her, in front of myself…

I had no fear falling for her and have absolutely no regrets loving her either.
She made my young days as a man in transition worthy of memory, and for that, I thank her.
If she loves letting actions speak louder than words, I’m happy I did my part then.
I may not have said I love her, but at least she knows I meant it everyday.
Now comes the inevitable sojourning, of palely loitering alone by the lake, where no birds sing.
I will miss the music.
Times like this, when I am all alone, is where I feel the most vulnerable.

In the words of the great John Mayer, when you’re dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.

Oh daymaker, my dream maker…
When, oh when, will I wake up then?
I bet its right about… now.

I’m choosing to decide I loved you.

I fell fast, I fell hard. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am leaving behind all the wanderlust of you being the one I only saw an actual future with. I am leaving it all, at that.

Goodbye P.

260908

It was a colder evening than usual. The time ate away slowly, albeit calmly. It was almost like how one saw their life play before them before they die; there wasn’t any fear. There was just this melancholic aura that filled the halls and made people pace slower and just made time a lot stiller. It was like Death had chosen me and let me realize time was running out. The end of me was imminent; the juggernaut that was Fate had started to grind its mechanic inevitability. I was soulless that day, ethereal.
It all started from the most hellish of mornings in my short, twenty-three year old life. It stood to be the longest, dreariest three hours of my professional career, so far. It tested my mettle; all that I knew was pitted against me. I was stretched, and tired. The grim task looked insurmountable, but for any inspired bloke, it was simply fellable. Little did I know I was going to do all the falling and little of the felling as this hot Friday morning crawled into the afternoon. With every ticket associated, issued, released, cleared and delivered, I was oddly the one going to be dismissed, disused, released, and unclear for failure to deliver.  The weather simulated the way to Mordor, I had a quick detour through the fire before I was meeting the maker. I was to meet the Daymaker that afternoon, but apparently fate had bigger plans for me. She rescheduled on her whim but made amends for it at the end. We were all meeting in the end after all.
After a sleepless nap and something to nibble for lunch, the hot afternoon was turning cooler as the sun went down with it. The sunset was foreboding the end of my days. The halls that afternoon before class were filled with students unsure of futures, of indecision to be made, and of ways of time to kill. I was oddly at the center of it all; a messiah that should help root them and beat this tidal wave of uncertainty. An observer named Morph asked me if I was going to go down fighting, or in simple earnestness feign fighting and accept defeat. It was a troubling query, and I responded indifferently. I had no real answer. Again, one of those signs you stubbornly fail to notice. I tried my best for them, but little did I know I was no savior. I was the one that would need saving. My hero-complex surely would not do me any good today. I was the one who would end up dead in the end, like with the chalk on the ground to remind people I once lay there, that and paired with a faint candle trying to beat the wind to stay alive; to remind onlookers and passersby a soul passed on this day.
The bell rang, and a friend came by to pick me up. Like the crow that flies near the living nearing the unliving, he was no evil. He was a guide into the underworld, the pallbearer and undertaker rolled into one. The long walk down stairwells and a quick trip through the red hearse allowed me time to detach and think. In the quest for cigars, we were lead to choose the available cigarettes. We went outside the walls, inside the walls, for a trip like Rizal’s. Fate was a poetic bastard; I’d give her that. Like the slow, rhythmic drum roll before a hanging, I was given the opportunity to enjoy good company and second hand smoke of my friend Robert Frost, ingeniously funny wearing the crow’s costume I mistook as the crow. After a pep talk on moving on, which was ironically about moving to the next life after all, and good, sincere exchanges of goodbyes, he walked me to the outer walls’ gates. Not until later did I realize I was walking my final steps.
The moment of truth came fast and blind sighted the fuck out of me, like most deaths. The tranquil pace the day took was a casual joke Fate apparently liked to play, especially on me. Now, remember the slowing down of things before you die, the life flashing before your eyes?

That happened. The last thirteen weeks passed by, then boom…. heart failure.
The end wasn’t how I pictured it though. It was…weird. There was no anticlimactic chest grabbing; no CPR in the hands of the beloved; no throve of people grimacing in pain and disbelief. There was just the death of love right there and then. No erratic, slowly to stopping lines of a heart monitor. No sirens. No wailing. The heart just stopped. Not even cardiac arrest. My heart just flat lined.

So did that day.
I saw September there laughing in the corner, obviously out of the sheer delight of getting me. She had my number after all. To see her with another man did not mean the end of me. But to see her hold the hands of that man, of choosing to hold it, that had definitely meant the end of me, the end of us. What helps deal with the loss was figuring out it was coming anyway. I saw the signs come early. I was wondering why Fate changed its course. I realize did I change it? I figured truthfully that all of our decisions are half chance anyway. September made that choice to change. She chose him over me. The thing is, I wasn’t sad. I wasn’t even angry. Maybe it was the shock of the blood stopping in its tracks, but in reality it was the deepest, most relieving breath I ever took. It was the closest thing I had ever experienced to true freedom. There was still faint sadness and little bitterness, but it was oddly and overwhelmingly reassuring.
Fate knew my number was up. Damn you Fate, you bitch.
But Thank You. You had to be cruel to be kind.
You reminded me I don’t always get what I want. I get what I deserve. I deserve better. I deserve freedom. I needed a new lease on life.
Walking out the gate leaving September behind, my friend the crow-clad Robert walked me to the train to NeverNeverLand and had helped me realize bigger things were due me. Not death, that was for certain, and he reiterated. Thank God I was mistaken. He helped hand in my green, plumed hat back. Robert said I was an eagle, and eagles don’t belong felled by the ground… Our kind deserves to be soaring in the seas of the skies.

I guess I did need to die to experience a rebirth, like the way the phoenix rises from the embers of a funeral pyre. I am reborn against my will for a reason. Now what drives me is that reason I was chosen to be reborn. I must find out. I must find who freed me, who she is, moreover, who She will be.

Ah the rain. Even the Earth mourns with me after all.

Episode One: Duo

Today is the day I ultimately resign from running away.
I have tried my best all these years, and alas, despite indelible sacrifices, my past has inevitably caught up to my present.
How can I look forward to the future if everything I built now, a simple, well-rounded life with the future in mind, can be just suddenly swept beneath my feet like sandcastles meeting the rising tide?
That is the fear that has been tormenting me at the back of my head these last years. Apparently, these fears are not unfounded. The utter collapse of the life I have built has met the natural course of a refugee’s life; imminent death.

Last night as I was about to put my daughter, Mara, to sleep, I heard three loud thuds at the door. After tucking my daughter in and kissing her goodnight, I head to the door. I pry the curtains to check who the visitor is at this late hour. I checked the wall clock in the living room and it read ten-thirty. To my surprise, it was somebody I did not expect to see. It was Uther, my half brother. When I open the door, we just naturally hug tightly as if we haven’t seen each other in years. The truth was we haven’t seen each other in ages… four hundred and fifty three long years to be exact. As we tap our backs and start to face each other, my happiness suddenly changes into fear. A fear so great I forget my manners to greet my brother properly and run upstairs to see my daughter. This meant only one thing, and that thought scared the hell out of me. As I open my daughter’s room, f, I fall to my knees.

I cry.
I curse.
I lament.
I growl in agony.

I feel really powerless for the first time, regardless of my original powers being stripped from me that fateful day years ago. As I stare into my daughter’s empty bed, with only her teddy bear Santi in the place she used to be. I feel distraught, utterly dumbfounded…
Uther comes in shortly after, and rubs my left shoulder then taps me in the back. He regretted to inform me that apparently, he was too late. He came all this way, against the High Council’s orders, to warn me.
I could distinctly see in his eyes he too felt the same thing I was.
The day of The Gathering has come.
We knew this day was coming.
What we decided to do next was something I was hoping never to do again.
We needed to head back home to Luthienne.

How I Met Her Daughter

It’s early, but not too early. It’s eight in the morning and the fan above our seats is grinding slowly. We are all sharing a breakfast in the Philippines’ favorite eatery for kids. And for good reason too, the Jolly Spaghetti. The air was hot because the mall’s air-conditioning wasn’t on yet. I bet however, there was more to that heat.   

I met her today for the first time. She was very, very pretty, and very shy. Her eyes were as squinted as her mother’s, and were a lot more truthful and honest than that of her mother’s familiar eyes. There was no weariness, no optimism, but a recurring stillness. It may have been either been the early morning or the reality of this meeting, even if I was sure she was barely aware of it. Today was in a sense, crossing the bridge to someplace new, for all three of us actually.
I may not have looked like it, but I was as nervous as she was I guess.
I feigned a smile in all attempts to calm both of us down, but we knew better. Who was I kidding? We weren’t fooling anyone, especially who introduced us. It was always something I knew I’d have to do eventually. It didn’t scare me really, but I realized it was scary the moment I set my eyes on her. I wasn’t scared of her of course. It was just an anxiety that came along with going to the next step. I was afraid of what meeting her would mean for me, for us.
I was scared because I was fucking up so often that if I messed this up, maybe who’d introduced us would take it as a sign. And maybe she did.
I am anxious about that: that big, goddamned elephant in the corner of the room, being all purple and annoying. I was doing one thing after another wrong, where I didn’t realize it had grown so big. The worst part was meeting her didn’t change that. I was hoping there was a magical connection; an instant kindling if you will. I tried on my end though; the scary part was this only had half to do with me. The other half depended on her, and like most choices, meant half-chance.
Again, the slippery slope of shit rolling downhill is killing me. How do I talk about it without making it as awkward as it already is?
I’m showy, her mother isn’t.
We are both assuming, which is weirdly, not translating into anything continuous.
She’s shelling up and I am afraid I’m one of the reasons, and by she being the mother I mean.
How, oh how, do I beat this brain trained to think and let the heart that was trained to forget take over? It’s hard to live one day at a time looking at a future that is scary; it has so much potential to look so beautiful and yet, is so fragile it can disappear in a heartbeat. I’m actually scared now it maybe slipping away. I want to grab it but not pull it, to hold on to it without choking it.
The problem is I forget this does not lie only with me and that it lies with us. We both have to decide this relationship is worth pursuing and, that is where the initial fear is coming from. What if, god forbid, I’m the only one that wants this? I’ll be screwed again, then go back into screwing.
Fuck… This is too good to let go. I’ll have to man up, be a better listener, be a protector but not over protective, be passionate but not too hot, show no jealousy and just be as loving and caring and freeing, the way her mother has unconsciously done for me.
I have decided I will go and fight for our love. I’m going in and I don’t know if I’m ever coming out alive.

I’m very sorry though Kiara. This was perhaps also the last time you would meet me.

I think I will hate Jollibee for the meantime too. Sorry too Jeff. I’ll try.

Fuck the definite maybes and the same differences. No more grays. I’m going for the black and white.

Moving forward does not require IQ, but EQ

Moving forward does not require IQ, but EQ
A Short Written Anonymously Anomalously

INT: A plain office, obviously a session room. There is an armchair that is upholstered with leather for one, where a Psychiatrist is seating, obvious because of the clipboard in his hand and the mannerism of twirling his pencil in his right hand, obviously drawing more than writing down notes on occasion. Across him is a cushioned couch for three, where a client, Pedro, is lying down, but is staring at the cactus on the low coffee table in between them. The sun coming through the window gives someone the idea it is mid morning already, somewhere around 10.

Pedro:
Why am I so half-assed lately?
You know me; I’m all gung-ho, with much the bravado, the endless mound of progressive retardation in all excessive glory of only the truly brutish men, ala the very-piratey combination of rum and gunpowder!
But these days however, I’m always lost and disoriented, like a puppy with a tail in between his legs; a nut lighter if you will… Maybe even two…
So, what seems to be the problem Doctor?

Doc:
Simple lang sagot diyan pare, putang ina ka!
Magpakalalaki ka kasi!

Pedro:
Huh? Am I not being one by thinking ahead, not only one but maybe two, three steps ahead? How about the brain-wrecking and nerve-wracking planning? Isn’t manning up more than a display of balls?

Doc:
Pota ka kasi eh. Tignan mo ko, gigising ako ng alas-otso ng umaga na walang laman utak ko. Pagbukas ko ng Nick jr., puta andoon yung pinakamatalinong tao sa telebisyon. Hindi si Kuya Kim, hindi si Mike Enriquez, lalong lalo na hindi si Erwin Tulfo. Siya lang ang kayang humarap kay Robin Padilla ng mano-mano at may pag-asang manalo… At nagpapakalalaki siya kahit wala siyang bayag pare…

Pedro:
Nick Jr? Whose sage-like there?

Doc:
Banatan ka ba naman ng “the first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you are not staying where you are.” O diba, taena!
Henyong-henyo si Dora the Explorer? At 8 o’clock in the morning no less! Uhm, Pak you ka!
*weilds his middle finger*

Pedro:
Then please remind me what in the fuck am I paying you for?

Doc:
Eh bat binabayaran mo pa ko? Dali naman ng tanong mo.
Kaya sadyang bobo ka eh.
Una maraming kang pera.
Pangalawa, ala ka namang friends na mahingan ng libreng advise. Pangatlo, ang inuuwian mo’t best friend sa bahay ay ang alagang pagong mong si Hamlet.
Intindiyedos?
Yun yon pare….

Pedro:
Fuck you..

Doc:
No, pare, you fucked yourself first.

Pedro:
Pffttt…..

Doc:
Oh, wag mo kalimutan P850.00 tayo per hour ah! Cge, labas.
Kailangan ko pang pagkitaan yung bobong susunod sa iyo.
Mwuahahahaha *evil laugh*

The End

the most tranquil nightmare ever…

I’ve been sleepless lately. Like really sleepless.

For the past 4 days, I lie in my bed at eleven in the evening and rise up at six. The crazy thing is, in all that time, it did not matter how hard I tried, I just could not fall asleep. I popped the sleeping pills; I tried milk and cookies, maybe even counted a million sheep. My eyes would just not close.

Am I crazy?

You tell me.

I checked everything, from medical journals on insomnia, to the leading ophthalmologists here in New York, even Chinese acupuncture practitioners in Chinatown and in sheer desperation, the Italian mob bosses with handy dandy sleeping methods.

Nobody has been able to help me. What’s worse is, nobody can explain what is happening to me. I have been moving from place to place lately because I have started to attract too much unnecessary attention as THE medical freak. Maybe you’ve seen me in the paper lately, “dead man walking,” “shut-eye failure” or even my favorite, “the real hollow man.” The odd thing is for the last 92 hours, I haven’t been able to close my eyes. I can’t blink, I can’t wink. I couldn’t wince even if I was hit with a bat, couldn’t even squint at the noon’s high sun.

To tell you frankly, it’s driving me nuts.

It’s driving me so crazy; I am losing the sound options and am starting to contemplate the crazier ones.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?

Help me please… I’m in dire need of solutions and am running out of time. Not being to close my eyes have deprived me of sleep and we all know that means a considerable loss of logic. If I don’t find an answer soon, like right now, I am very afraid actually, that it may mean the end.

This is my last resort.

I need a quick way to sleep, or one for the longest slumber ever.

3 The Tipping Point

Whenever I remember how the town Friar described Christianity’s so-called Hell, I shuddered in utter disbelief. Do not ask why I was even at Church. If it would help you satisfy your curiosity, I followed a lovely lady inside. Alas, she was a nun to my horror. Now back to my tale, where I was saying the friar was wrong. There are no pits of fire or savagery of unspeakable torture and alienation in a rocky abyss that could compare to the Hell I have seen.

I have seen good men go bad, hear of children kill each other for food, and experienced the most revered curse at their Gods in the times of their most dire need. If anything, I always truly believed we could never end up in Hell. For one, we are here. I have always believed I have been to hell, and even back many times.

I am unfortunately proven very right.

After passing out yesterday from the pain of my stomach still being unable to muddle through the rancid island food, or simply my poor taste in choice of the dubiously delectable, more hopefully edible local flora and fauna, I stand yet again a day later, now two days wasted, with all efforts to gather good footing. I stumble the moment I put wait on my legs, bringing me to an excruciating kneel. With my entire weight heading to my knees, I feel the rough sand tear into my already days’ wet skin. The pain is simply unbearable. As I try again to rise, I notice my face on the sprawling tide, my face staring back as I look as dreary as my lifeless ship, sojourned in misery by the side of sea. I see my face age considerably, a combination maybe of the physical fatigue and the emotional emptiness. I am running on nothing as my entrails become my extrails and my extrails become my entrails.

As I search over the horizon for something I am unsure of, the sun’s unbearable heat starts to hit me. I now feel light headed and extremely nauseated. My clothes have sand in places unimaginable, my boots are soft from being wet all the time, and the worst of it all is my hat, my poor glorious, double-plumed black hat, with actual bones to form the crossbones, is lost. A captain is no captain without a ship. But without a hat, even a man he is not!

This has made me realize one thing. I am no theologian, nor a philosopher. One thing I have figured out though, with much sincerity, is that hell does exist. It is the godforsaken place where you are all alone and everybody else is in a happier place. They are all there together, my crew of bastards, happy, content, maybe even benevolent, as compared to me. I am here, all alone to deal with misery with sadly the ink running low and alas, the rum gone. Since there is a hell, where I decidedly am, then ultimately there must be a heaven too. Truly, that must be even at the least a bit better than this; my fate.

I gird my loins and resign to destiny; I gather all my strength and in one sweeping motion run for the sea; against the low tide and into the water, pushing forward until the water is too deep to wade in and requires me to swim. I go forward with all I have left in me, my shell of a soul and wasted savvy, into the heart of the ocean. I am going to pursue happiness with no reservations. I want to see how far can I go at beating my destiny. I have fully come to terms I am in Hell and have decided I am paying the devil a little visit. I had to bargain my get out of here, or force him into one.

I end up doing just that, but oddly, far from how I imagined it to be.

2 Save Our Souls!

This morning, I awake dreadfully hung-over, deranged from the irritating squawks of the seagulls feasting on my fallen comrades and the monotonous crashing of the high tide. I remember the rum running out last night, but sadly it was not enough as I agonizingly felt ever troubled and guilty. I felt so guilty to the extent I tried and fell tired from the moving of my men for burial. As the moon rose to its peak, revealing a crescent eerily increasing in luminousness as well as gloom, I instead turned to salvaging what rations I could make out useful to make living here in the island a lot less hellish. The stench of the pile of men in the distance reminds me that maybe I should have buried them first. My men however, knowing them like brothers, would have understood. They would have done the same thing; fight each other to the death with one arm and a fork than leave their lives to the follies of fate.

After much thinking of the order of things to be done today, I ultimately decide to rise ingloriously to my feet to check on my ship. I painfully discover that The Sta. Maria has taken a distinct liking for the rocks. Now the right hull has a gaping hole, far problematic than my previous assessment, since I now need more than lumber and rope to repair the ship. I too now, have to find tar, or something similar to it, to water proof the underbelly of the ship, as if cutting wood to shape and making rope out of the local flora was not hard enough. I suppose one more catastrophic setback should not hurt my chances at getting out of here after all.

I always was never good with the mathematics, as I seldom used the compass and the mapped known world and left my destinies to the stars and the celestial skyline when I navigated the oceans. This too I suppose, leaves me to believe only in two things; fate and chance. They may considerably sound the same but they are entirely different altogether. Fate led me here; as I had no hand in the matter as I found myself in this dire predicament. On the honor of my dead men, I swear I did not run into the storm. It chose me and ran into me. On the other hand, there is chance; I either make it out of here alive or join the sad fate of my brave men.

And that is all I need. My shot at redemption, at proving fate can be and shall be beat, this is the only thing that drives me to gather my wits together and postpone the drinking until the sun sets and my ears overtakes my eyes as my primary sense of feeling. I can always do something about getting out of here, and that is all the truth I need. I have, since last night, maybe also being under drunken fervor, realized I like my chances in getting out of here alive. Fifty- fifty. dead, or alive.

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After much warmongering on the seas for my fate, I save my voice and decide to have a quick, anomalous breakfast of oysters and coconut flesh, the most of my futile efforts to acquire something palatable. I quickly thereafter, feel a growing pain in my loins, dwarfing the throbbing in my head. I feel as if I’ve eaten a barrel filled with rotten fish, ratted biscuits, some old, rickety lager and gunpowder. The unbearable pain is followed by oddly, something I cannot remember.

All I remember is waking up in this place…

We shall call this place Hell.