Miguel and His Heart

Miguel has a bad case of being in love with falling in love. During the three years that Joanne has known him, she has heard him speak of being in love for right about thirteen times --- not that she’s counting, only it has come up in the conversation. Indeed, Miguel is the simpleton ladies’ man, who’ll find an apple for his eye from every class he’s been in, fall madly in love with her eyes, her nose, her smile or some other part of whoever she is. And Joanne hears of everything. She’s lost count of number of times Miguel has pulled her to one side and swooned over a new girl from, okay, applied physics this time. She’s given up on remembering their names or following his message of checking the girl’s picture from the Net and telling him how she thinks of the girl’s eyes, nose, smile or what have you. Joanne knows it’s going to be some other girl next season. And there has never been a defending champion.

He’s never stuck to just one. And he never took it well when Joanne reminds him how he never falls in love for a girl in her entirety --- he plays favorite body parts. One day Joanne offered to download all Miguel’s love interests’ faces from the Net, and ala-Truman, from their different facial features build the perfect face for Miguel’s perfect girl. Joanne was laughing far too hard when she said this that she didn’t notice how Miguel’s eyes were piercing right through her, first with deep annoyance, then with dark contempt, then finally, that queasy feeling he knows all too well. Miguel has fallen in love with Joanne’s laughter.

But Joanne of course, if she learns of this will never take it to heart. She’s known Miguel long enough to conclude that this will soon pass and that it is decidedly temporal. Her laugh, just like physics girl’s eyes, blue girl’s nose and that other girl’s smile, is nothing but an isolated case of a slice of time taking Miguel’s heart hostage. Miguel can never tell Joanne now of his new love. Of how he’s falling deeper and deeper into it every time she finds something funny. How he felt stupid over wanting to record that laughter so he can take it home with him. And how, this time, he understands every bit of what Joanne says of him --- that he simple loves parts, never wholes.

But he's one to take action. To every girl whose part he has fallen in love with, Miguel has been painfully honest. He has professed love to each one, be it via day to day rose delivered to the girl with beautiful feet or a sonnet for the girl whose voice he simply adored. And he never said that it came from a 'secret admirer.' He'll honestly sign 'Miguel' with every gift. So now he is finding it ever so hard with Joanne, as he could never, at least at this time, tell her, woo her. He could just imagine how she would give him that look once he even just starts to do a Don Juan on her. She would never give him her time of day and even ask him whatever happened to physics girl now. Joanne is Miguel's love encyclopedia, and this arrangement between the two betrays any charming plan Miguel might have up his sleeve. But his resolve is to tell Joanne, just as he has told everyone else. (In perspective, this very well shows how he's never one to specialize and is simply after the rush and the pursuit; he's in love with falling in love after all.) He has to let her know, make her feel with him how he loses his breath a little at the thought of that laugh she gave out over the Truman cut out portrait. He has to make her feel special and prove to her that she can think about maybe falling in love back. She's entitled to that sensation, he thinks, as he believes everyone must go after the sensation of falling in love. So during a random lunch at their college cafeteria, Miguel takes Joanne's hand, puts it by his chest and says, "You own this now."

First silence. Then a blank stare. Then Joanne bursts out laughing. And it made Miguel's day. And a dozen more mornings.

Nicanor and the Hospital

What other people might not know is that Nicanor wished he had Gorbachev as his surname. Nicanor Gorbachev he thought sounded right on. And no one would miss that it sounded right on.

Nicanor had many more of these thoughts. He thought he was clairvoyant. He thought tattoos should be studied to fully understand man's evolution, he thought every chocolate bar should be eaten with a single mouthful and so on and so forth. He is not exactly a weird chum, he was actually part of his high school's top tier clique (they called him Nicky), and he won't appear to you as someone with floor-length ideals. But inside Nicanor's mind were indeed high and mighty ideals. He carried them identified one by one in his head and he never forgot. So that one day, any day, should he come across anyone who was willing and hot-blooded to discuss his thoughts, we would be armed and ready to prove their every detail.

And one such thought was his thought about the hospital. The edifice, the stark white building. Our Nicanor thought every building's design should serve its general purpose. He liked nice looking airports because they did very well in both welcoming you in and reminding you to come back. He thought that they should always look nice so that you are pulled in, even from the aircraft. He thought the pawnshop design was sufficient as it serves the need for a quick buck, and just like a sari-sari store, it is designed for the quick transaction. And so, in the case of hospitals, what was their general purpose? It was for healing --- and Nicanor never thought that hospital designs facilitated healing.

Because of this nagging belief, Nicanor developed a knack for visiting hospitals. He couldn't quite tell if his growing obsession was for the search of a true hospital or was to add to his mental database of hospital design failures. But whichever the case may be, Nicanor never missed a chance to go to the hospital. He visited every sick relative, he attended each hospital visitation mission and elevated any simple ailment to one that needed hospital care, (Of course, the emotional reasons of the first two instances took precedence over his obsession. Feeding his interest on the hospital structure was a bonus to attending to his social obligations.) At every excursion, he would look around, gaze his eyes around the hospital features and observe. And time and time again, he would come across an anomaly, or so he thought. Emergency rooms should be bigger, as a great majority of trips to the hospital are for emergencies. Cafeterias should be a focal point as nourishment is a part of healing, not only for the patients but for the caregivers / relatives as well. Recovery rooms should embrace the outdoors, reception areas should have more that three active counters and hospital rooms should mimic a regular house's bedroom. All of which, Nicanor thought facilitated healing. This staunch believer first came about the hospital design obsession as a little boy, when he wondered why sick people were never served his grandmother's chicken soup. This allowed him to see contradictions in the hospital setting, in the hospital building's design.

And this ensued for years. And as he continued visiting hospitals, he had become so used to seeing the same contradictions, the same anomalies, the same wrong placements that strong frustration suddenly set in. It was frustration upon frustration, leading him to think new thoughts about patient welfare, generic medicines, nurse's wages, etcetera, etcetera. It had engulfed him so bad that he knew he had to stop. So, against what he had been so used to in the past, he strove hard to avoid any new trips to the hospital. No more visits to his aunt who had just given birth to the clan's youngest member, he'll just catch them at their home. No more hospital visitations, he'll make up with barrio medical missions. And no more over-estimated headaches. He would have to be diagnosed with cancer before he sets foot in a hospital once again, that is if there were no available alternative medicine facility. And so, this heightened dislike for the hospital kept Nicanor from getting sick. He watched his health with a passion, so as not to catch the slightest bit of a cold that could escalate, he feared, into something that might drive him straight to the hated hospital.

In the end, Nicanor still has not forgotten his obsession, just as he has not forgotten any of his mighty ideals. He has just curbed it, diverted it into another brand-new obsession that, quite frankly has led to this: the hospital kept Nicanor healed.

Wilderness Days

These days are dry or soft or rained on or rainbowed.

These days can be filled with tears.

These days are spent quietly, in recollection of the other wilderness days spent.

These days are spent trying one's best.

These are the days prior to reaching the Promised Land.

These days are now.

Mikaela's Poems

She had lost her stash of poems more than once. Mikaela. Once when her personal computer crashed, and some four years worth of lyric sensibility went with the delete button. Her short life lived went with it, each moment of unexplainable joy, immature grief and overemphasized struggles. She, however, in every bit of fairness, has made some worth out of those emotions, and although the experiences were undoubtedly limited and amateur, the poems spoke more than they should have. Either the feelings dug deeper or the coldness too piercing, that her lines gave more than justice to her everyday. But, despite all of their relative glory, they were lost.

Another instance was when she, after a time of separation form her lyric abilities, after the onslaught of worldly detachment, apathy and belittling of poetry’s importance, mindlessly hid her limited new collection. They were never to be found again; they have been forgotten. Those poems filled with a collective and tiring theme of pragmatism have been forgotten, as if in concurrence to an argument that poetry – even free verse – and pragmatism together never really worked.

Mikaela has lost her poems at another time or two, when she was younger, at about twelve. She, on the verge of puberty, finding everything about herself too embarrassing kept / hid / threw away her poems. Insecurities have crept in and they were just words. Yet these words, like all others that she has strung together, were words that lived.

She doubts that she will ever find her old poems again, along with their processed feelings of love, wanting, loss and adulation. They have gone to some place where no one can read them again, or, strangely but possibly, a forgotten place where another can find solace in Mikaela's musings. But now, with the loss / new beginning brought about by the absence of any evidence showing the life that her words once had, Mikaela writes again.

Prologue

As I watched the dry leaf rustle through the drier earth as the stern wind blew, the sudden rush of a strong current deafened me. The sound was clear, as the waters that gave it power. Yes, it shall quench this dry earth. Yes it will give life once again to my leaf. Yes, it will give me life.