The Forgotten

We call each other by name.
By song, by touch.
By any peculiarity we disguise ourselves with.
Yet in this crafted hour
I call you by that which you don't recognize.
And so when you hear my voice
You will hear it a stranger does, detached,
Ephemeral as a distant echo that glides unto valleys
And at once is gone.

There will be days when even my face,
Familiar as a well-loved toy,
Will cease to exist.
And in its place, only a vague countenance
Of colors and brush strokes,
Only bits and pieces of letters
That must have once resembled notes
Written haphazardly
On walls, tabletops.
It will be like waking up from a dream
and realizing that even the waking up
Was unreal.

I glide in front of you
Like a feather.

Free Reading To the Public

Sometimes when I am in the toilet in early morning while still half asleep, I have the most splendid visions. Here's one of them: Put up my own library. My library will be huge and it's going to have 6-tiered bookshelves, one shelf for each genre. And when I say genre, it has to be very specific as in, "Historical fiction taking place between 1810-1850" or "Novels that have been adapted into movies starring Brad Pitt". Or not.

Or maybe I could just collect used books from the neighbors and display them on the sidewalk for anybody who's interested in a free read. I'll set up 2 tables and a few plastic chairs beside the makeshift  shelves and put up a sign that says "free reading to the public". The only problem with this idea, though, is that it won't be an original. Somebody in our neighborhood (in Manila) already beat me to it, and I don't have the space anyway. And so now, this person is reaping all the fame and glory as I see local TV crew set up cameras in front of his house while he is being rehearsed for an interview (will write about this in a separate entry). Why haven't I thought of this sooner?

Anyhow, the point here is that books are always a good thing. They must be made public, and shared. So it came as a pleasant surprise today when Sir Joseff of La Belle Aurore lent me his personal copy of the Duino Elegies (from one of my favorite poets, Rilke!). It didn't matter that we only met for the first time today, and I probably looked creepy with my smeared eyeliner after rubbing at my eyes and forgetting that I had eyeliner on (I only confirmed this an hour later at a mall's comfort room which could only mean that I unknowingly freaked out more people at the mall and during the jeepney ride to the mall). But anyway, the kind gesture was lovely, I can't wait to devour the elegies, and I can hardly wait either for the other book that somebody else has promised me. :-p

A merry, nerdy, bookish Christmas to us all. :)