this seat is taken
© thoughts & travels since 2011
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Storm.
Surf. Sand. Stones.Sun. Zambales. Six words that defined my four-day long weekend last week. Sunday night when we met at a terminal and headed to Zambales on a three-hour bus ride. Six friends made it on a rainy Monday morning.I did not surf because of some bloody reason and spent the morning watching the other five friends surfed against the crashing waves instead. I befriended the huge blocks of stone walls lined up on the shore while I took photos of the surfers. The moment was so surreal for me as I was shivering under the rain and tinkering with the camera. I sat on one huge block for almost two hours while the rest of them tumbled down their boards. I realized that someone should invent a pair of glasses with wipers for me.
Pine trees everywhere. It’s as if Baguio was relocated beside the beach.
A graffiti on the wall of the hostel we stayed in.
These served as a makeshift locker for my iTouch, glasses, and my friend’s camera.
My refuge for two hours. They told me their story and I gave them names in return.
Cuboidal universe
My favorite stone face
Gloomy
Trapped dreams
Young kids who went surfing together. Sometimes I wish I lived near the sea.
We stayed at The Circle hostel. It’s a cool place, I tell you. You should check that place when you wander around San Felipe, Zambales one day.
*Credit to Gene for the first, fourth, and last photos in this post.
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Watching Girls in a painfully boring weekend gave birth to one of the ridiculous and trivial ideas I had. I humanized my feelings and named her after one of the show’s protagonist, Hannah Horvath.
Here is my quick (as you can notice in my penmanship) introduction of Hannah Horvath in my journal.
Episode 9 of Season 1 punched me in the face with a Mjolnir. That’s how excruciating that scene was. -
Re-posting this entry I made two years ago. I can’t recall enough what was happening at that moment when I was doing this post. Whatever it was, it must have been a struggle because this entry turned out to be quite poignant and raw. Also, pa-deep of me.
Sometimes, there is this sudden feeling that you need to freeze the NOW. It’s this certain urgency to press the STOP button of the remote control of the Universe. Every single unit that surrounds you seems to be in a fast-forward state and you can’t keep up. It’s when everything is such a rush that you don’t actually have a grip on reality anymore. And yourself. You feel like you’re falling into a rabbit hole like poor Alice. Only that you already know that there aren’t going to be fancy characters when you start to wander off. You are drowning in the noise of drawling voices around you. You walk beside the PRESENT when after a second of visiting your mind, the Present is leaving you behind. You start to walk briskly, looking after the trail, but in a blink of an eye, the gushing wind obliterated the only traces of hope and your sanity.
You scream. Only in your mind. Your face shows no sign of chaos that are flooding your veins, poisoning you gradually. You tend to utter a word. You change your mind. You only think of two words now: Shut Down. You blackout. You force yourself to forget even the sense of time. You play apathy around you. Your ears are blocked and so are your eyes. You filter what you see. You only use your eyes for the sole reason of surviving the day. The rest, you don’t care. You don’t appreciate anything; you don’t process any thinking either. You play dumb. You ditch humanity at this moment.
You start to question everything as if you were only born a minute ago. You don’t understand any social system. You are innocent. You cannot be guilty of anything. You question your existence. You question the existence of the Universe. Most importantly, you question the existence of time. You want to stop it. Time. Are you powerful enough? All you know is that you can’t feel every second that’s ticking by. You want to feel it in your skin. You want to make each one last. You want to keep it. Time. It’s not recyclable. Hell, it’s not even reusable. The only thing you know about it is that it’s always in a hurry. Sometimes, you want to hold hands with it as you amble the street on a gray day. You want it to keep your pace as you mosey around the neighborhood. Maybe, just maybe, you want to stop time even for a minute.
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Sometimes we accidentally hear a random song that sticks to our head like a chewed gum stuck at the soles of our sneakers. That chewed gum of a song will stick to you for the rest of the year. I think I found the soundtrack of my being 24.
Everyone seems so certain
Everyone knows who they are
Everyone’s got a mother and a father
They all seem so sure they’re going far
They all got more friends than they can use
Harper Simon – Wishes and Stars
Everyone’s been on a holiday in the sun
Or they just got back from one
All they do is just have fun
They all got more friends than they can useI’m slow like the trees when they grow
I’m sluggish like the ocean when it moves
I’m plain like water or like rain
But I shouldn’t complain cause it don’t matter -
I didn’t have that much of Summer this year unlike half of my Facebook friends who spent their sunsets in Bora. All I remember doing was going to Pagudpud with my best mate and my backpack. Thought I’d be going to Baler too to hit the waves but ended up spending that weekend at home. I blame it on my hermit nature. I know. M is for misanthropy.
Some of the photos I took using film during the short trip. The last one is my favorite.
Someone got wet and wild in Kabigan Falls. Clue: Definitely not me.
Ghost on the beach. Don’t know what exactly happened here but I like it. Some dreamy shot I got there.
I waded along the shore wearing my Chucks. Brilliant except that I brought half the sand with me back to Manila.
Why am I gravitated to this photo? Must be the leaks.
(All taken using Bell + Howell camera.)
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I’ve been commuting half of my life. I can’t remember how many times I have sat on the window seat or stood throughout the bus ride during the rush hours. I’ve ridden every mode of transportation in the city – tricycle, jeepney, the MRT, and bus. The MRT was my favorite in college. I used to sleep from the second to the last station in North to the most condensed station in the metropolis. I have spent two hours of travel on all kinds of buses, too – ordinary, air-conditioned, and the roller coaster kind. I have sat beside almost a thousand strangers and talked to only a few of them. I am not a very good conversationalist so most of the time I just seat unnoticed in the corner doing my ritual.
I love working at night, ergo I end up sleeping late. But there’s something about the morning after that has charmed me. So one ordinary morning on the bus, I made a mental list about the five things that make my morning trip a ritual of sort.
Window seat.
I love seating by the window. I like to see the roadside and the sunrise. Sunrise because it’s the only natural thing that doesn’t exhaust me on the road before I finally imprison myself in the office cubicle for the rest of the day.
Book. It’s like my Bible I bring wherever I go. My bag is always stuffed with my work laptop, two purses, Muji journal, a pen case, and a book I’m currently reading. Sometimes I still bring it even though I know that I will just sleep on the bus.
Music. And lately, Phoenix.
I play mixtapes that I secretly created for certain people or moments and experiences that are too precious to forget. Mixtapes for people I miss or seldom see in person. They may be friends or interesting people I befriended on the Internet. I have this habit of listening to the songs they share and if I like them, I download the songs and compile them in a mixtape. The best part is I am introduced to a number of beautiful songs I wouldn’t discover on my own.
My iPod’s name is Pippo, by the way.
Traffic.
Where is the traffic in this photo? The sign suggests it. This was taken along EDSA, every commuter’s personal hell on the road. I am so used to the traffic here in Manila that I’ve become numb to it like a taken-for-granted lover. Eventually, I found comfort in traffic. I now have the time to take a nap or continue reading my book. It’s a blessing in disguise after all.
Sleep. This is probably my favorite part of the morning ride. Sleep Part 2 on the bus. My mother used to tell me that I could sleep through a magnitude 7 earthquake or any disaster and wouldn’t feel a thing. I have demonstrated superb sleeping powers when I was a kid, she told me. Sleeping is my sport.
I guess there are a lot of commuters like myself that share the same list as mine. We all have our own rituals when we travel.
So there you go. The things that make up my morning. What’s on your list?
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She was late for work.
Nonchalantly, she joined the queue of commuters impatiently waiting to take their seats.
She was thinking of a mundane week ahead.
She scooted inside the bus and probed the passengers haphazardly seated.
Some of them glanced at her. Some didn’t care.
She analyzed the look on their faces, trying to decipher each stranger’s thought.
Trying to obtain a synopsis of their characters, running a quick background check on them.
Questioning their motives.
Each stranger’s motive for seating on that random bus seat.
As if that would be possible in less than ten seconds of her amble along the narrow aisle.She perused the men and quickly averted her eyes when theirs met hers.
She preferred to be seated beside the ladies.
She had always been this sexist as a passenger.
Aside from that, she didn’t care.Apparently, it wasn’t her lucky day.
She chose to settle on the three-seater left side of the bus.
She was seated next to…she didn’t mind checking.
She was sleepy and exhausted already.The traffic was unbearably slow that morning.
She would be late for work, no doubt about that.
She checked the stationary vehicles at the window, fuming and riled.
Her seat mate on her left, by the window, was looking at the road, too.
He/she was tapping his/her fingers at the red bag on his/her lap, while nodding his/her head along to whatever music he/she was listening to.
She still wasn’t sure if she should be sexist to the person on her left.
But she sure was sexist to the one on her right.
Who, by the way, had his head swaying while sleeping and had almost touched her shoulders.
She made a heavy sigh while she noticed that the bus conductor was nearing her party.With the aid of her dubious peripheral vision, she concluded that the person on her left was a woman.
Her marred vision whispered to her that her seat mate to the left had shoulder-length jet-black hair.
Despite the flatness of her chest, she wore a white shirt underneath a plaid polo.
Maybe she was a sapphist?
Whatever. Too much prejudice perhaps.
The conductor came and asked her of her destination.
Then she felt something.
It’s as if her seat mate on her left was looking at her.
She felt a pair of eyes piercing through her face.
She was not sure if the person was poring over her face or just plain staring.
She was about to finally look at the woman’s direction when her seat mate suddenly diverted her head to the conductor and uttered her destination.
She was taken aback when she heard her voice.
She wasn’t a she.
She was a he.
She felt her cheeks blushing.
What a fool!
Guys these days.
They even have nicer hair than women.She turned full-time sexist then.
She wasn’t too at ease seated between men.
This time, she didn’t mind.
She was too sleepy to care.An hour later, she was still on the road.
Trapped between a snoozing man on her right and a dude on her left whom she thought was cool.
Cool.
Just because he seemed like an artist and someone who could vandalize the inside of this boring bus with his artworks.
She was stereotyping perhaps.
But the thing was, she caught him looking at her face when she peeked at the window.
That was when after she awoke from her nap.
Honestly, she was caught off her guard.
What if she drooled while dozing off?
That would have been disconcerting.
But then again, she resorted to napping.
She hoped to be invisible while she slept.
The traffic was eternal and so was this awkward bus ride.When the bus hit the first station, there were seats left vacant.
Embarrassed still, she changed her seat so that she could continue her nap.
She took the seat in front of him.
Heck, it almost made no difference.
She was still conscious of his presence.
She was too sleepy to mind.Another hour had passed and it was time to move out.
She stood and saw him standing, too.
She hastened down the bus and walked briskly.
Simply because she doesn’t want him to remember her dozing face.Strangers Part 1 was written two years ago. It was based on a true story.
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To Myk,
Escape and make it happen!
Myk
This is what’s exactly written at the last page of my volume of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I remember writing it after reading the first chapter of the novel, mainly because I had an intuition back then that this is going to be my book. You know, the kind of book that epitomizes what you’re going through at the moment. That book was it, I told myself. The aspiring artist, his despondency, his struggles. The idea that I can somehow escape too from the chaos around me just like the protagonist comforted me. Somehow, I know, there is going to be a way out.
Almost a year after reading the first few chapters of the novel (I am halfway reading through it at the moment because of too many priorities piling up in a grown-up’s world), I find myself in the same predicament – I am losing interest in my job, everything feels like a routine, and what I dread the most is, I am certain that this is not the career for me. I won’t be delving into the reasons why because I plan to post about them when I have successfully escaped from this corporate zoo. All I can say is that, I have learned all the survival skills in a chaotic place like this.
I took that photo of an elephant in a zoo a couple of years ago. I placed that message on it to remind me that I need to fulfill those words I have promised myself a year ago. I don’t want to be that elephant growing old and weary. Most importantly, I don’t want to be stuck in this zoo.
this seat is taken 