You know the feeling when you watch a movie the second time around? How that sense of familiarity sinks in and you suddenly realize, Ohhh, that’s what it was all about…? I feel like I am watching things the second time around.
Or the third. Or the fourth. Or the fifth. Or the nth.
One time you took me to Makati and we spent a good portion of the night looking for an open coffee shop. The rain was drizzling on our cheeks. We paused. I told you the story of that one time we ran through the rain, when you sent me off to the bus going back to my hometown. You didn’t really remember. We walked on and settled on the café across the street from your office building.
I almost got lost the next time I tried to go there. Then by the next return, it was like coming home. And now as I roam Ayala’s pavements, I feel like I am watching this movie the second time around.
We’re like magnets —
polar opposites drawn
towards each other, inadvertently
gravitating and colliding into
one another
in the most poetic ways possible.
Perhaps you are wondering if this blog is still alive. It is. It has fallen asleep these past few months. But stick around and maybe you’ll see it coming back to life.
It will soon be eight months since my homecoming. Just eight months, but I already feel like I have been here since forever. Still, like cross talk, what was in Malaysia crisscrosses into what is in Metro Manila now.
We go through the tunnel near Ayala in EDSA and I feel like the Petronas Twin Towers will emerge anytime. I walk through Greenbelt 5 and I think I’m just lost in a new wing of IOI City Mall.
I have an ex-colleague from Malaysia working here. I’ve also been connected to a Filipina who has been attending Malaysia’s Midnight LG but has now come back home. I’ve started wearing my black office work dresses again.
I’m teaching now. I do distance education. In other words, I have a long distance relationship with my students and we do most of our interactions in cyberspace.
Adrian and I have, thankfully, graduated from that. As of blog writing time, I’m sitting with a view of the sun setting over HV Dela Costa Street, waiting for him to pick me up for our dinner date. I think back to our 1am once-a-week Skype dates. I don’t ever want to go back to that.
I’ve gained weight again. I think it’s because I eat so much when I’m with Adrian, when I’m with my friends, when I’m with my colleagues, when I’m with my family. It’s fine. I’ll go jogging tomorrow, or, like Elizabeth Gilbert said, I’ll just “buy bigger pants.”
I’ve been writing poetry sporadically. You’ll see some of them in this space here. But life here is more rushed, busier, I think. The week has flown by, I haven’t even realized it will already be Friday tomorrow.
I’ll do my best to keep this blog updated. Besides, it feels good to be back here writing again.
scribbles and stories 