Weekly Photo Challenge: Street Life

I’ve always had a love affair with Vigan. How I always find myself sighing and swooning and walking on dream cloud when looking back to all the summers I’ve spent in it. How can one not be in love with it? Aside from the gastronomic delight this place has to offer, the town is just comforting and strange and romantic at the same time.

With streets that are dressed in cobbled stones and lined with exquisite but abandoned Spanish villas that are about 150-200 years old.

With staircases that lead up to nowhere.

With baskets of garlic and brooms and old wooden chairs clutter up the sidewalks, waiting for their new owners to acquire them.

And beautiful antique carriages parked at the side for about hundreds of years.

How can one not be mesmerized? I have been going back here every summer since I was just a 10 month old baby and I can’t wait for my little girl to fall in love with it too.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Reflections

(This is my reflection seen on bathroom tiles.)

Distorted Contorted

Sometimes you can’t help but get seduced by the aura a new acquaintance emanates. Bold, mysterious, free. As if they reflect who you’re supposed to be.

You get confused and betray your responsibilities. You thought you’ve fallen in love thinking that you have found your twin soul.

All logic disappears right before your eyes.

With them, you feel alive and the goals you once had seem to be getting closer when you’re together. You look back into your life and find that you’re not happy – your childhood dreams gone; you’re freedom died a long time ago; you’ve become somebody you’ve never thought you’d be.

But this is all just an illusion. Perhaps, a way to escape your reality. And when you’ve realized this and ponder on your mistakes, you find yourself staring at your distorted and unpretty image. You now realize that this contorted reflection could even be more real than reality.

Daily Prompt: That’s Amore

13 years together and I’m still under his spell. Here are some things I wrote recently about lover boy:

I am the sun. I could be sizzlin’ hot or could be scorching mad. I could be perfectly sunny or just mellow. And I’d love love love to melt into the bay and submit myself to themoon. But I see to it that I come back and rise again.

Tus is my moon. I yield to him. I swoon. And I just let him embrace me all through out my darkness.

You are the louche in the absinthe in me for your mere presence clouds me with giddiness. I sit here radiant with my own elixir but your existence is what intoxicates me. We merge. We are one. Together, we are la belle epoque.

Tus must’ve implanted some sort of a Dudez magnet in him. I find myself following him wherever he goes. But then when I think about it, Asti follows him everywhere too!

There’s something about Tus. I have my whole life to find that out.

In the meantime, I think I heard him stepping in to the bathroom. The urge to follow is strong. Let’s not resist.

Tus in my bed is my favorite. But not an unconscious one. That means no play time. But in this case, I love my sleeping Tus. That just means, he’s not going anywhere. I lay beside him patiently and in hushed motion allowing sleep to keep him hostage. He stirs, I kiss his arm. Just to let him know I’m here. He wakes. I smile. But he’s going after my iPad!!! No!!!! My Christian Grey and Eddie are keeping me company! So we wrestle and I am pinned down. He tickles. I bite. But I know that he’s not going anywhere. So I surrender because in giving up, I know that I still won.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Inside

 

My little girl when she was only 8 months. She wanted so badly to get out and be free!

This is her now and she’s almost 4. This time she kept placing herself inside anything she can fit on! A box, a pail or a basket. But I love witnessing how she spends her day – creating her own adventures and experimenting. Analyzing stuff and making up her own rules of a game I’ve never heard of. Prancing about with glee and dancing to another day full of possibilities. Her playfulness makes me want to go back to being a kid. Hell! I am the biggest kid around! But seeing this little wonder makes me want to be the best mom I can be too. 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Perspective

We sometimes never mean to deceive anybody.

It’s just that, they always assume. Now, that’s the problem

Maybe there are different levels of being vain.

When you were younger and everything’s pointing up or even falls at the right places, you embrace your youth and adored how you look. You owned the world.

But when the perkiness starts to sag and you know you gotta hide the unnecessary flabs behind spanx, you now spend more time getting your puppies in the right places, trying to revive how you once looked.

And when the creases are now becoming more defined, you apply all kinds of mud, oil, fruit or lotion and you lather yourself back to your 20s.

So yeah, maybe there are different levels of being vain but these are all vain obsessions with retaining youth and beauty. It’s the grade of vanity that becomes heavier as you age.

Wow, vanity sure becomes a waste of time but hey, I still got time to waste!

Everybody wants to hear a juicy story.

But not when it concerns your mother! Oooohhh.. how I shudder at the mere thought of it.

Little Lota was a daddy’s girl. But she loved her mom very much too. She looked up to her and considered her as one of her heroes. But when daddy grew ill and passed away, she was devastated. How can a young girl cope with such a traumatic event?
But she did. Her mom moved heaven and earth just to provide her and her siblings everything despite being a single parent to 3 young kids.

Seeing that her mother worked very hard for the family, Little Lota, when not so little anymore, knew she had to help out and be doubly strong in regaining the whole family’s strength back.

Time had passed and the mother found a ‘friend’. The dad’s whole clan was against the mom seeing someone new – banning her in their own circle as if she committed such a heinous crime but she stood her ground. She knew she did everything she could to be a perfect wife and be a loving mother and didn’t neglect her duties of being both. Having a friend is not such a bad thing.

But Lota hated the guy! She rebelled against everything the mom said. She drank as hard as she can but soon realized that her mom needed their support in this. She, in fact, also deserved to be happy. So the 3 kids were the first to understand.

Now that everything was out in the open, the mom would slowly open up to them, especially to Lota since she was the eldest of the three. She wouldn’t really give her a hug when her mom was down since she was still uncomfortable of the fact that she’s seeing another man but she gave encouraging words and tried consoling her at her time of need.

Years had passed, Lota was living in with her fiancé and her mom was still seeing the guy. They had their monthly lunch out and Lota had to borrow her mom’s phone. She accidentally read the boyfriend’s message and it read:

“The sex was awesome last night, darling.
Can’t wait to take off your clothes tonight.”

Sure, she knows the two are probably doing the deed but she doesn’t need to imagine it! And seeing that message instantly flashed images of the two getting at it!

Goosebumps on goosebumps formed on her arms and prickly hair stood at the back of her neck while she cringed and grimaced at the thought of her mom and the guy together. In bed. Naked. Having fun.

She made up an excuse that she had to do something and ran off. Confused and maybe hurt, she didn’t know where to go but she drove home and headed straight to the bar, called out to her fiancé to give her a double shot and gulped it down in less than a second.

Nope!

‘The sex was awesome last night, darling. Can’t wait to take off your clothes tonight’ was still flashing in her head.

Another double!

After indulging in an almost empty bottle, the image of the message was a blur.

But the soggy boobs and the loose skinned butt is all she can still see. She’ll get used to it. But she’s probably gonna have to pass up on lunch next month.

Until soggy boobs and loose skinned butt is out of the picture, lunch will be back to normal.

Daily Promp: Always Something There to Remind Me

Not so much a flashback but music transports me to a different world. There was a time when I listened to nothing but The Beatles for 3 years. Right now, Pearl Jam is my current addiction. Here are a few snippets of what I wrote about them and their music:

I feel like a floating entity that is brought to life by a certain song – whatever song i’m crazy about. I squat in this space where i’m in for a period of time and get freedom from this isolation. But something sits in my brain at the same time. Something that is gnawing away at my thoughts -That this could be fucked up. That maybe i’m facing a serious identity crisis situation. Or maybe i’m just way too hooked with this romance i have with music? This love affair that never ends ’til i jump off to another lover – may it be another artist or another song, It doesn’t matter. It just never ends. Right now, Ed gives oxygen into my hungry soul and i am alive.

I walk around with a different vibe. As if disconnected to reality. Living in an alternate universe where Pearl Jam just exploded. A smile is plastered on my face as if i carry a secret that only Eddie and I know. I twirl and walk with a rhythm, trotting to the bass playing of Jeff. I flip and toss my Abruzzese-ish mane, in sync with his crash thumping on the drums. My spirit sky rockets with Stone’s superb skills and i get suspended at the same time with Mike’s lead. Overwhelmed and blown over, I don’t give a rats ass if I’m residing in grunge planet. I’ll travel back in time soon. Right now, I’m enjoying my citizenship at rock world. So with my bony fingers, i raise my hand in a rock n roll salute. I’ll see you soon, mates.

Footsteps by pearl jam is my new obsession. It puts me in an immediate zone. Locking me in a bubble where the push and pull of emotion is so powerful you’d think my imaginary universe would soon burst with intensity – with the commanding presence of eddie’s voice, stone’s overwhelming guitar riffs and how the melody of the harmonica cradles me like a baby. Mixed with the energy i give out, my cold and clammy hands and the tears i shed you’d know that the chemical composition of this planet is a paradox. The perfect mix of a soulful ride. So don’t you burst my bubble. Let me enjoy my Footsteps flight.

Pearl Jam’s Parachutes sounds as if it’s out from a Revolver album. Come to think of it, there is kind of a Double Fantasy ring to it too. Which ever. All I’m saying is I can definitely taste Beatles flavor there, whether during the Beatles era or John Lennon post Beatles era. What makes it Pearl Jam? Eddie’s golden fucking baritone, man! Despite the song’s somber vibe, I was smiling. I liked the mix of flavors. And when Eddie sighed his hushed cry, the wind swept me up, in sync with my tunes, and carried me like a parachute the rest of my way home last night. High. Nothing could be better than being lifted by an Eddie sigh. I love you, Ed!

I’m still in an Avocato state of mind but I decided to hitch a ride with my Singles OST instead. I was enjoying the high of getting lost to the music that I totally forgot the sequence of this tape. So when Pearl Jam’s turn was on I felt my head swell, my jaw drop and I only realized that they took my breath away when I had to steady my breathing after the first stanza. I took a long soulful pause, shut my eyes, finished their 2 songs and switched back to Avocato. Next flight, Parachutes.

Rapt in fascination from Mike’s solo in Alive, I taxied to work in slow zigzags to the tune of his guitar playing only to realize that I have landed on the moon instead. I am amazed and jealous on how they can translate their emotions through epic, ear bleeding solos. I’d give it a shot and the sound it produced was literally ear bleeding. Nothing righteous, man. Instead of grooving to the musical ecstasy of my guitar licks, here I am licking my wounds in defeat instead. We’ll leave the adlibs and the solos to the likes of Mike. I can definitely feel him through his playing anyway. Maybe we’ll settle with that for now. In the meantime, let’s enjoy the tunes no gravity style.

The chorus part of Mind Your Manners (Pearl Jam’s new single) has a punk Elvis Presley ring to it. Such a turn on! So sexy that I got cross eyed just imagining Ed sing it. I shake my head to remedy my eyesight but found myself getting lost again in my cross eyed state of swooning and drooling over Ed. Oh man. Can’t wait for the album to be out. In the meantime, I’ve got Mind Your Manners… sslllrrppp! Excuse me.

Damn Eddie! You just keep on surprising me. Your Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns version almost gave me a heart attack. The Aphrodite in me totally lost its cool. I go giggling like a school girl to bawling like a baby at the beauty of your singing. In other words, I’ve gone ape shit, man. You come here and fix it.

As usual, I was tuned in
then Of the Girl came on
so I turned it up
and of course, got turned on.
But I kept flipping out to the guitar sound
for the twanging messes with my head
but soon mellowed down
to the soothing vocals of my Ed
Sigh…

  Abandoned and old but not forgotten Housed by the unseen sheltered by the unholy Abandoned and old but the beauty, ah the beauty, it remains. (All photos taken in Vigan, Ilocos Sur, Philippines Summer of 2008)