The Cough that Wakes You Up at Night

Of the many things that I brought with me from my life decades ago as a teenager until now, this blogger account has got to be one of the more enduring ones for not only has this served as my electronic output for our creative writing class, this has also served as part-journal part-expression board throughout my angsty college years as well.

The love for the sake of love...

The other one is my love for writing, although now, it should be more aptly named as my love for the love of writing, for not only have I completely stopped keeping record of the nuances of my life since November 2022 after my 5-year journal completely ran out of pages, I have also skipped on my snail mail writing via the Slowly app. Until of course, Christmas season arrived when I frantically took out my baby blue Hermes typewriter from its case on the TV rack (and which I have bought with my first salary from when I started working as a nurse with NHS England), and penned a few cards for my family and friends from around UK, the Philippines, right across the Atlantic, and my first ever card to Japan!

Just a couple days back, we marked the start of another year, I am led to question whether this act of logging into my account after a long time is a genuine attempt of taking back what I once lost, or simply a feeble attempt of implementing the very popular practice of New Year's Resolution.

At this point, I am just recovering from a very bad case of flu which hit me a couple days after Christmas, and two consecutive 13-hr shift in the Emergency Department (the first of which being my worst shift ever in my entire career!); today, I went to get my prescription for a chest infection, and still managed to show up to my appointment with my research mentor where we got to discuss a little bit about my proposed study which is part of my 6-month internship with the trust's research department. 

Truthfully, this is one of the things I want to do with my life... and this blog has actually been a silent witness of all of my wishful thinkings, way back during my teenage years.

Browsing through my past entries, and though there was hardly any over the past few years, one realizes how relative the passing of time is to every individual, in this case, to every platform. Twenty-twenty was just one blog post away from this, however, for the rest of the world, this has been a turning point on global health, health policies, and economics among many other things involving the security not just of each nation and its citizens, but the future of the entire human species.

There are so many things that can be written about this period, a still ongoing nightmare for many parts of the world including back home, but whenever I think of my experiences right from the start particularly enduring a 6-month lockdown in Manila, essentially being thrown into living in the same house with a few other people I barely knew (think Pinoy Big Brother but lockdown), being away from home to work abroad in the middle of a pandemic and never seeing my family for almost 3 years-- every single element of what happened to me feels like a lifetime away, that I find myself at a loss for words to describe it.

However, even with the many things that this situation has taken away from me, it has not given me a few things back, rather it has led me to experience other things which I would have described as 'beautiful' under different circumstances: first, I found a much deeper appreciation for my brother with whom I have endured the lockdown with and the big move of working in another country; second, I have been brought to closer to the strangers who shared the same traumatic events with me and that just by finding ourselves at the same place at the same time on that particular moment, we have been 'forcibly' connected into a friendship which eventually blossomed and endured, and that we  will always have this shared story which we will tell even our children's children in the years to come; and lastly, there is this truth-- that it is possible to love someone so surely, that at one singular moment, everything can be so hopeless yet you have chosen this person to be the sole reason why you think life is still beautiful, to have given this person such power, and to believe this with all your heart.

He is the sun, the wind, and the alien...

[to be updated soon -RN]

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Of Machines and Men

It was a moment such as this that led me to write the opening line of the sestina. Lying on my back in the middle of a blazing afternoon, I listen to my own breathing as the sound of mechanical blades slicing through the air fills my ear. When I made you guess what it is, its actual answer was one farthest from your mind.

As the surrounding air is being sucked into this same machine, the movement of the blades causes for the current ahead of it to move faster- everything follows the natural order. Perhaps, that's why this sestina, a complex form for a poem, seemed to be a natural choice for the next project. 

This cycle of writing, which started as a game, has led us to the ending of a wonderful story between a boy and an ant and another wonderful beginning of our own. 

And so, we keep on writing...

A sestina written by Mycota & Pyrrhic

Blades slicing through the same air I breathe, a cycle
of fate piercing with the ticks of time- an agony of silence.
These blades and clock hands though forged in fire are just man-made machines,
that clink in unison with their creator, that slowly decay into dust.
The organisms die and so do they. Steel creaking, steel breaking,
before the face of merciless fate that intertwine


A weary man drinks from a cup of wine and poison that intertwine
and diffuse into blood, while the heart beats a numbing cycle
of stygian blood flowing through mortal veins, breaking
hope as the cried muffled by eerie silence
breaks faith into pieces finer than dust.
Life is no better than half broken machines.

The weary man meets a clockwork whose body is run by machines.
The sirens of time tick, weaving a melody that intertwine
with each movement to fuel mechanical souls before they in turn, bites the dust.
Such an empty wonderment as the world turns another cycle!
Such a beautiful song wasted into ears that hear nothing but silence,
leaving in its wake - tears- glowing and breaking!

The steel hands reached out for a fragile human heart that's breaking.
To find love that vanish in the cruel time machines.
To grant love where there is war, to speak of it where there is apathetic silence.
To finally weave two hearts separated by fate in love that intertwine.
To rest in a love free from the torments of a creaking, tiring cycle.
One that will stay, even when everything turns into dust.

This is the substance that reassembles life out of dust,
like a warmth that come by spring, breaking
through the thick blanket of cold white in a terrestrial cycle.
It is the tenderness even in this world of machines
with gears that turn in two opposite directions yet still intertwine
and keep echoing warmth even in the most eerie silence.

It is the sweet voice in my head as I embrace the silence.
It gives my life meaning, even if I'm nothing in universe but a little tiny dust.
So, I hold out my weary iron hands, hoping for my mechanical existence to intertwine,
melting within heart's beating, witnessing the barrier, slowly breaking,
my eyes blinking, my lungs expanding, like a human's and not that of machines.
With the thawing of the long frozen heart, it is the beginning of a new cycle.

Mortal blood and engine oil intertwine in the arteries of this heart that pumps in steady silence.
A new life, a new cycle, springs from death and dust.
Love is an engine, turning, breaking the customs, coldness and cycle of self-condemnation of machines (and men).

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Love, It Is

It is waking up to the sound of rain and the rumbling of thunder wrapped in warmth that somewhere the sun rises gently over your head.

It is waking up, seeing a glimpse of your face that make me grateful each morning. It is your tender love wrapping my day in rainbow.

It is reading the lines of a book in a quiet corner of the room seeing your face as I read these words out loud to you.

It is reciting your words in my mind which makes me remember of how blessed I am.

It is learning the same dance steps for the rest of eternity and feeling as if we've just danced it for the first time.

It is watching the same night sky for a thousand times and finally meeting the stars one by one.

It is uttering your name in my prayers and resting peacefully in the thought that I am in yours.

It is sleeping in your tight embrace where I'm certain that I will never be lonely.

It is doing the same old things the way I've always done before. It is doing these same old things but with a resurrected soul.

And one day, it is finally being reduced to dust, yet choosing a thousand times over to be a part of the air that fills your lungs for a moment than return to the stars and burn gloriously for eternity.

Do you feel it?

Each of your particles is entangled with mine.

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The Haunting

"The Ocean was never my escape; she had always been my destination."

When one day you decide to come to a halt, I want you to look behind your shoulder and see not the hopelessness and regrets you've managed to store within the four corners where death lingers around; I want you to see how far you've managed to travel away from the shore and into the heart of the ocean.

These sleepless nights shall not be filled with the eerie silence of soul-voided bodies but with the turbulent crash of waves along the shores; not with the blinding operating room headlights but with the faint glow of protozoans suspended in the sea and the distant burning stars, existing not for you but for themselves, perhaps.

You will run in haste not for someone else but towards that meeting place where you'll slowly tread across the shallow, rolling saltwater. You will learn names, you will gaze for hours at the horizon, you will go deeper, you will float, you will embrace and never learn to fear because by then, you will be in a place you loved most.

You will hardly remember the salty taste of tears on your lips for when you are with the ocean, you will shed your tears no more.

This passive passion 

is why it's impossible;

why it stays a dream.

(image from Neil Gaiman's The Ocean at the End of the Lane)

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Life in Pink

The lady picked up the rose her lover had given her a fortnight before. It had lain there for weeks, untouched in her drawer; a thorned, bent abomination, marking his departure.

Mindlessly she started plucking the petals one after the other; her blood-red lips, which had once enjoyed his kisses and showered him declarations, was now a broken record playing a song with only two lines- "You loved me, You loved me not."

Now as she closes the song, two petals were left barely holding on.

And as she softly uttered, "You loved me not", her love seen through rose-colored glasses turned grey when she heard the last petal's clear echo "...loved me not" as it too slowly fell to the ground.

------------------------

On a totally different note, here are a few of the La Vie en Rose versions I've found on the internet:
the first was by Daniela Andrada, the second, by Pablo Alborán, and the last by Melody Gardot.

"La Vie en Rose" , literally means" Life in Pink" but can be translated as  "Life in Rosy Hues" or "Life Through Rose-Colored Glasses", was the signature song of French cabaret singer Édith Piaf. The lyrics of the song were written by Édith Piaf herself, and the melody was composed by Marguerite Monnot and Louis Guglielmi. [Wikipedia]

An early spring music treat for myself.

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Said the Passionate (Book) Lover to His Love

Let me unwrap your earthly tunic

And let me enfold you in my arms

All throughout the night

I shall warm your cold body

As I stare at your lovely nakedness.

Making love to you takes me to ethereal places

So let me explore your every corner

Lull me to sleep with your words enchanted

And leave me breathless with every kiss of your pages

While I leave a mark on you so that everyone will know that you're mine-

"Ex Libris".

a 10-minute post by shinarun ^_^

Hi blogger, I'm back~!

It's funny what cold weather and hot champorado can do to my brain. 

Darling, kiss me now

or later, doesn't matter

All of you is mine.

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Me & my Nutella

How is it that I can make both sad & crazy posts within ten minutes?

This post idea came up when I was looking for the usual smiley-at-the-end-of-the-post.

I can't help but see myself and my Nutella in this smiley. 

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Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain

Our Humanities 1 professor made us watch this; and it's the first full-length French movie I've seen. Unlike the first one he made us watch (Old Boy), which, I tell you is very much disturbing, this one doesn't revolve on revenge that much. Though there's a bit of it in the middle, it was done in behalf of someone else.

AND there's a bit of love story in the end too. Sort of added for the main character to fix her life, and not for the entire movie to exist.

Other notes: 

If the actress who played Amélie Poulain, Audrey Tatou,looks familiar to you, 

I could only think of two reasons why: 

1) She looks a lot like Liv Tyler. 

2) You've seen her play Sophie in The Da Vinci Code.

After watching this movie, I was partly dismayed with Ghajini particularly the scene where the woman helped the blind man go to his destination while the woman was describing the setting on the way. Rip-off. 

Amélie Poulain: "She doesn't relate to other people. She was always a lonely child."

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#J28

For that uber-bishie Japanese guy who turned my world uʍop ǝpısdn , 

Happy 28th birthday!

I have always wanted to sing you a birthday song; too bad, I'm not a good singer. But maybe I'll get to sing you a song someday, when you're sitting right across me on that dinner table, the two of us staring at each other's eyes and... *wakes up...blinks repeatedly then rubs eyes...(whichever comes first)*

[I might be mean, but I just had a good time with all those people who rely mainly on facebook to remind them of their "friend's" birthday. They actually greeted me today-August 30- and I had to like all the posts and thank each of them. ]

Today's a special day and I really, really hope that Matsumoto Jun will be having an epic-ly blastin' day today.
We fans have tried our best to make #J28 a trending topic on twitter.

It's our own way of saying you MatsuJun will always be trending in our fangirl hearts. ♥

When my heart goes doki-doki-doki,

then my throat dries up (-____-)

then my eyes become heart-shaped and start to beat (like that kitty);

because you're standing right next to me.

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First Love

I was very much excited to tell my classmate that I have watched the movie "A Thing Called Love" last Tuesday. As I sat beside her I exclaimed, "Uy, napanood ko na yung A Thing Called Love."

Jam: "Maganda?" 

Me: "Uhmmmm..."

Jam: "Gwapo?"

Me: (laughs) "Oo."

Fairy tales are funny you know.

When he's near her, all he could
utter were the squids. When she's
near him, all she could think of was
the button.

Please see through me. Please see through
my eyes and know that I am lying.

They promised each other not
 to fall for the same girl again.
 Duh, who can ever keep a promise?!?

Rub-a-dub-dub. If they

can't hold 'em, just touch 'em.

The best way to end a confession is to fall in the pool 

(not shown so as to avoid spoiling the...Oh sorry!)

Just tell the girl "I've waited for you all these years" and voila! She's all yours. XD

:I think it's your right as readers to know that some of the captions in here doesn't even relate to the story itself. And that I made this at 1 am.

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