an unsolicited letter to young girls who like girls

This image is from Tumblr, and is originally from here.

Saturday afternoon, overheard in a table full of twelve-year-olds:
Girl 1 to Girl 2: Ano, may crush ka sa girls?


Dear kids,

Here's where I say: It doesn't matter, don't let anyone tell you otherwise -- yes, you can like that girl/that boy/whoever you want.

ghost month

So as we all know, August is Ghost Month.

I'm not a stringent believer of superstitions (though I often take the 'wala namang mawawala kung susundin'-route) neither am I an ardent believer of ghosts.

What I do believe in, however, are hauntings.

Aside: I was so certain I had written something about this, sometime around 2006; I was looking for it in the dotcom and couldn't find it there. Apparently, it's in my [now locked-down] LiveJournal. Dated 2nd November 2006, it goes:

alone again on an october night -- nights like this, i could not sleep. i am kept awake by sounds of footsteps treading my worn carpet with a familiar, calculated pace.

i get up to take a look. as expected, there's no one there.

there's a haunting i fear more than i do poltergeists and spirits, and that is the kind that involves a still-living memory. it is a haunting that is defined as hearing voices, and seeing and *feeling* things that are not there.

you are most likely the only haunting i've ever come across. that makes this apartment the most haunted place i have ever been in.

i heave a sigh as i head for the kitchen to heat water for my coffee. out of habit, i take out two cups and not one; i put the other one back in upon catching myself.

there are habits that are hard to let go of -- habits a lot like this, formed through several late night trysts, few and far between. years hence, they are still here, embedded, recurring every now and then. especially on nights as haunted as this.

(a faint but familiar laugh, a swish of a pale blue sundress in the corner of my eye, a knock on the door, the feel of coldwarm hands.)

there are ghosts in this room, and they're all you.

Oh dear young self -- please use proper caps. HAHA. (Though that ending is too true. To a degree, I'm still looking for this girl who used to write like this -- have you seen her? What, she's on indefinite vacation? That. Sucks.)

(More hauntings of same sort under cut)

a series of brief letters to younger selves

i was here.

i. Dear 19,


Oh, I remember us -- we were like waking up in entirely new skin.

(Under cut: letters to 19, 20, 21, 22 and 23)

a brief letter to my nineteen-year-old self

Wow, old closed down blogs are FUN.

Here's a good one from January 2004 (Cannot link to this anymore, it's from that closed blog - it's fascinating how much I wrote back then, and Christ, I did close that down for A LOT of good reasons, hahaha. hmm.)

i remember cleng sharing a fantasy once - the barkada seated around a table in a Makati hang-out, perhaps some posh coffee shop, talking over coffee and cigarettes and cinnamon rolls *yum* about our latest businesses, investments, houses, families, stories, assignments, sex partners *cough* and you know.. erm, that kind of stuff.

LOL SEX PARTNERS. \o/ This strikes me as very funny because this is EXACTLY what we do these days. It's funny, a bit creepy, but YES more funny than anything else. ILU GUYS.

(Cut for old things)