Head to nerve to arm to wrist to hand to fingers to pen to pristine paper.

In between that long journey is an idea, a striking thought that had the author doubling over for a moment. A thought so strong it drove a barren head to paint an image which could only be conveyed through words.

That is where my stories begin. It is always an image, always a flashing picture or a certain scene. But it's blurred. It's like a camera focusing on a subject for the first time, and slowly - as you start to delve deeper into the imagery - everything clears up and you see the tiny details...

The trees, or the number of leaves left on a solemn branch that stands out. The feel of the wind as it blows past a solitary figure slumped on a park bench. A sky caught between blue and orange, or the few flickering stars that mark the beginning of yet another evening...

It stews in the mind's eye until finally you know who the person was, what he was doing there, why the park, why at the evening... all the reasons, the descriptions - and even sometimes the dialogue (however it might exist) - flash in your head.

Voila! 

Piece by piece, the story is complete, and it only usually takes a matter of seconds, or minutes... sometimes even hours. It is poignant, it is perfect, it - you just know - can move even the stoniest hearts.

Too bad that along the journey the ideas slowly settle, fal endlesslyl down, unable to maintain their momentum... and  never really reach the pen.

"Oh, Gravity, thou art a heartless bitch."

Where the towers spring forth, there must first be the land --- burned, razed, dug through deep and thoroughly and harshly. As unforgiving as the hand of strict father, as heavy as the hammering of a smith.

Before one goes meddling with the other meddlesome characters in the brain-muddling tale of brain muddling, one must first read about Prunus. If one has already done so, then one may finally read the actual introduction of this tale.

This is called The Adventures of Aliens. However suggestive the name may be, it is quite contrasting to the actual story, for this does not have exploding aliens or gravity-defying space ships and unidentified (but by doing so thereby rendering them identified) flying objects. This has spinning shoes in midair, not walking through doors wide open, forgetting to write one's own name in vital documents... yes. These simple stories construct the entire rest of the whole story, which is, after all, just a story.

Before everything else gets melodramatic,or at worse, cliche, one meets Darling.

Darling was no sweetheart, no matter how sweet her name sounded. She was, like everyone else one is bound to meet in this convoluted plotline, an outcast. One must understand that Darling brought about to every one else the powers of morbidity and gore and blackest thoughts. The thing is, Darling was never really aware of her being such a child of blood and flesh and carcasses. She thinks she's perfectly normal and as such, she has been looked down upon by society ever since.

If my clock could speak and I was who I used to be, I am certain it would not make the tick-tock sound it usually made for others. My clock would tell me all about the time I spent living - or not living - my life.

Only three ranges of sound: stupid, brilliant, okay.


Stupid... brilliant... okay... stupid... brilliant... okay...


Hopefully I'm at the brilliant stage, and my clock runs out of battery and forever stays that way.

Once upon a time, there lived a rich young boy who had never gone beyond the walls of his house. And the ten years he lived? He was perfectly content with it, thank you very much. He never knew more than the geography of his own home, having never stepped outside, but he never really minded. To him, life was sleeping and waking up and playing and bathing and going to bed right after the sun went down. He lived with fifty people, none of whom cared enough, because they weren't relatives, and his parents died in untold circumstances years before he had even realized he was a boy.

He was everyone's dream and everyone's nightmare, and he was everything everyone wanted to be and not to be. He was satisfied with his life being an irony. But his contentment was shattered when he was faced with the magic of uncertainty and awe.

He once met an old man who knocked upon their door one cold, stormy night. The man was turned away, as all old and poor people were when they came asking for help, but when the doors were shut, the little boy ran to the windows, opened them wide, and called out to the old man: "Come! Stay inside!"

The old man looked back, neared the windows, and smiled as he said, "Inside is nothing but inside, son. Outside proves much more of a venture. It is warm in there, and warmth I need... but the people are cold. I would do better unbarred outside in cold weather than inside with walls of living ice."

All throughout the years the old man’s words haunted the boy. He came to realize that the more he lived the way he did, the more he seemed to dwindle away.

And yet the walls were his only friend, and the silence his only comfort.

It has been quite some time since I last found it in me to tappa-tappa-tap away at my keyboard and rant all about life and to be perfectly frank, it is unnerving. Not only because it is a completion of the cycle I've been stuck in since day one of college but also because... well, just that. Because.


One simply cannot underestimate the power of words.

The weather is dismal, and a perfect contrast to the storm I'm trying to fight off. Not that there's any point in the first place. Oh, I've been worse, but it feels like what's to come is a whole lot more terrible.

Your music, bordering on
mellow and the
memorable, makes
meaningful masterpieces
from
your mind that
often meander in the most
mysterious of manners;
meekness and modesty might
be your mask, but
underneath is a myriad
of misdemeanor: from
the mischievous, to the
morose,
to the macabre.
Here
you are to meddle with monotony,
and meticulously
mediate the miscontrued and
the mediocre—that
which even
the mechanical
cannot beat—

You are simply mad;

you are the malady—

the melody—

and the melancholy—

The multi-colored Miss Ashley.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dedicated to my friend, Ashley Saludes
May you stay as you are
and as mad
as the Hatter

"Sometimes we don't end up with our first love because later on in life, we’ll meet someone greater than our first love whom we truly deserves.”

It's not making sense. It's not making any sense at all. This life is supposed to be easier, more laid back, much, much simpler! Why is it the other way around?

 A clear picture of my college-life stresses might give you a better idea of what I'm talking about: 1) My ribs are showing up against my skin now, that's to deplore to you how thin I'm getting; 2) The eye bags (not that I ever cared about them in the first place) are seemingly carved into my skin now it's scary, and it doesn't help that it makes me look like the mother of four hundred; 3) Health's not getting any better; soda tastes just like water to me already, could you believe that?; and 4) Thoughts that are seriously off-track are entering my mind more often than normal (not that they were never welcome in the first place) and it is unnerving.

It's wrong. This is wrong. I knew it would end up like this, anyway, but I wasn't expecting it to be this hard, to be this ridiculously painful. I knew what leaving would entail, I knew what was in store for me the moment I'd left the hard grounds of the institution I'd loved for four years.

But I could never have known it to be this hard.

Because it won't do - it just fucking won't!

Nothing will do; nothing compares to the sweetness of the Balatas aroma, to the noise of first-day bustle, to the knowledge that in two weeks you'll memorize the faces - if not even the names - of everyone around you. Nothing compares to feeling so important, so belonged, so loved, inside a home that's small and crammed and dusty but so achingly familiar.

Nothing compares to the way we'd all walk home together along the side road, and how we used to really own the goddamn streets whenever we leave school. Nothing compares to the bliss of entering school gates in the morning, meeting well-known faces, and dropping off bags to go and attend the daily ceremonies. Nothing compares to the easily-memorized schedules, the same old teachers, the faces of classmates - faces that have been long engraved into memories of each other. Nothing compares to the multifaceted cultures and emotions and personalities that you have in each class and how you miraculously get along with each other despite a possible million reasons for you not to. Nothing compares; none at all.

Nothing compares to the high school air, the high school aura.

Simply put, nothing compares to high school itself.

But dear, oh dear College, don't get me wrong. I don't hold any grudges against you, no, Sir, none at all. I just wish you'd be a lot easier to deal with, just like those days, when we knew we were still young and we weren't forced to grow up faster than we should. When we could be short and small and not be minded (except for the occasional teasing, which shouldn't be a surprise, not when you've got about thirty-nine shallow-minded immature teenage friends with you), when you could be crazy and yet nobody cringes away from you in disgust, when people don't question you for weird habits (like wearing jackets on sunny days, for example)...

...Just like those days when we didn't have to shy away from the people around us.

You're a lot better that I would have thought, College, but I'm sorry.

High School still holds the number one spot in my heart.

And it never changed since I left.