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for my new personal blog, please see http://livingaslayla.wordpress.com


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see you there!

ME

i am called
layla
it means night,
it means persian princess
and it means eric clapton's music.

i am 24

i am too old for lollipops
or for peter pan
and flat ballet shoes.

yet i look too young
to understand
r-rated movies,
insomnia, contraceptives,
dirty politics, hollywood deaths,
and heartbreak.

i am
the right size for bathtubs,
stilettos,
and red satin.

but i don't have
the right posture
for the runway,
for the military,
and for independence.

i shift
from frailty to confrontational,
from recklessness to yearning,
from guilt to defense.

i like
to believe in justice
to find strawberries in mountains,
to wake up from an embrace,
to discover the cure for abandonment,
and to recall being alive.

i was told
my smile is infectious,
my hands are restless,
my mind wanders
and my heart is cold.

but i may not always smile
to allow a tear or two
and i may not always want
to wear stilettos.

but i will always like
the story of the persian princess,
the feel of satin,
the promise of neverland,
and the therapeutic comfort of an embrace.

foolish games

[apologies to jewel kilcher for using the title of one of her songs in this entry]


writing while dishwalla ponders where somewhere in the middle is



i badly need the old-fashioned hugs where i could melt into.

what is it about games that deceive men as fantasy land equivalents while i woefully regard it as the "road to break-up land?" what is so addictive about 3D characters that don't provide any real interactions with you? how did it ever become better than curling up with a book?

i am sorry if i am speaking in absolutes, but i can't help but wonder why i always end up with men whose brains shut down in the face of online games. i acknowledge that psp's and pc games are continuously created for the same reasons we have bad germs and bad bacteria in our bodies -- a little dose is essential. what i cannot grasp is why they cannot live without it; they are enslaved by keys and arrows and the "are you sure you want to quit?" message/threat for consecutive days -- even weeks!

and most trivial of all how do these men, who had the audacity once or twice to say that they are smarter than i am (which i even poorly believed to be true) waste their self-declared "intelligence", their "wisdom" into unproductivity? these men, who i silently admire for being able to last all day with only a book and a coffee, now lose their charm as they rot in mental self-decay. i am no longer offered old-fashioned hugs, all we share now are scornful nights as we take our separate and individual turns in sleeping on a cold bed.

the 9 movies i watched (some, i watched again) on a 5-day stint

ANNOUNCEMENT: i am now proudly, a part of the training department. and with my much-deserved promotion comes a much-deserved vacation leave, which i utilized by watching the following:

1. my blueberry nights
2. the oxford murders
3. persepolis
4. be kind rewind
5. cassandra's dream
6. manderlay
7. run lola run
8. dogville
9. burn after reading

on the third day i'll resurrect again

give me three more days to consolidate my thoughts and i promise the next entry will be more cohesive. what happened in all of the days i've not been posting anything?

june 2008. moved in to a new place in paranaque. i abandoned my comfort zone, makati, making it a little difficult to go to my (new) work but the happiness that i come home to makes the general idea of paradise vague and pale.

july 2008. i started working for e-trade financial, located in my posh dream tower, rcbc plaza.

august 2008. wall-e is a best picture contender.

as of this writing. i am 23 (inches, which is my waistline) years, 11 months old with a punch-drunk love attitude, new sets of friends, a championship record in need for speed game, an unbelievable appetite for poker and a commitment to finish ayn rand's the foutainhead before september ends.

cigarette

she poised one
in her lips
and exhaled a relief
that he is gone.

if you are truly masochistic

then you would endure

seeing her name
in the list of my
dialled numbers


that in the interpretation of the arts
she, a winner


and the lies i feed her
so i can discard you
after our six lonely beers
get emptied together.

while i write verses on your leg

i paused to look at
eva green
bleeding in the kitchen.


it was a beautiful reminder
of our first encounter.

off the beaten path: camiguin's white island

white island and childbirth have one thing in common: they are both miracles. this inhabited white sand bar, which changes its shape depending on the tide has the mt hibok-hibok as its glorious backdrop. the best time to see white island according to travelers is in the morning, but we did better. we arrived morning and stayed all day, and so we were able to see how some parts of island appeared, disappeared and reappeared.

the next best thing in the white island is the fresh seafood. there are stalls situated in the island and the locals station themselves very early morning to cook for the tourists who arrive there. we treated ourselves to a tuna belly and liempo; note that food here is cooked by the kilo so it can be a little expensive. but you starve for fresh foods in manila, so it's worth it.

as with any tourist attractions, expect to meet foreigners. my expectation though has one extra surprise -- i met a french couple who found my love for the camera delightful.

and now for the real reason for this posting this entry -- feed my narcissism. enjoy the pictures.