after Manila Shapeshifters, writ. by Elaissa Bautista(For T. The city
I want to love you so badly, my darling land, my evergreen, barren mountains, abused by the very hands you laboured to ¹make. I apologize I haven’t gotten to kiss your spots that have only been touched by the sun. You were so kind to welcome an impostor into your guerilla-filled thickets, but I suffocate in the sharp silence of your urbanite town. I am not meant for a soundless existence, mulling life over the neighbour’s magnolias, soaking under the southern Luzon heat.
I want to love you so badly, but I rot into the slivers of your splintered stones.
I am the myth you will tell your grandchildren, stuck between your quarried ²rocks, choking on my desperation to fight against the lonely fate of staying here, lingering within a hard place. Time is so slow but life is so, so fast. I ache to cut off my feet, to place them onto your defiled soil. Oh, lamb of god, offer of peace.
infant
dweller who taught me that there is no ‘ u ’ in the word ‘kawawa’.)
Montalban, Montalban ang mahalin ka / loving you ay isang retrogression patungo / is an act of retrogression towards sa aking kamusmusan. / my years of unknowing. Pinanganak man ako sa / I may have been born namomolestiyang ingay ng siyudad, / in a city that violates, dito naman ako mamamatay: / I will, however, die here: sa ragasa ng iyong 4 dam / beneath the currents of your dam of pity na ipinangalan para sa mga kawawang / named after ruthful souls katulad ko. like me.
written by Maxine Mangaoang
M Dumur
a and I stop by Saraswati Indian Grocers to pick up two mehndi cones, powdered holi colours, and a tub of mango kulfi. We find Alok Uncle in the back, haggling over the price of hard, green figs. He tells us that figs are the healthiest things a person could possibly eat. He tells us that they could cure diabetes, cancer, and every type of mental illness. He tells us that his wife is unwell, that she speaks in nonsensical combinations of Bangla, Hindi, and English, that she won’t cook or bathe or get out of bed. He tells us that her nurses can’t understand what she’s trying to say, or why the male doctors send her into a spiral, or why she’d rather starve than live off of watery chicken broth and steamed peas. He tells us they’re going back to India next month, where madness means something. He leaves with three bags full of figs and a box of pakoras.
written by Trina Das
Ingredients of a Daughter
Written by Aia Llanes
With an aim to make the perfect-picture family, one must obtain the sublime set of ingredients to create a successful dish that would taste scrumptious and would be tantalizingly appetizing to be presented. Perfection shall be birthed from two narcissistic individuals whose mistakes are unbeknownst to themselves. (A) A pot of sugar, spice, and a sprinkle of everything of virtue and vice would make sense to have the idyllic shell of an identity that would always look beguiling to be presented and boasted in every familial reunion. A sure win in terms of which child is the best trophy. This soup shall consist of: [1] Doe pair of dolly expressive stoic eyes, [2] Bow-shaped lips that the public assumed would never lie, [3] Small ears of eavesdrop that is immune from all the shouting and fighting, [4] Supple, lustrous jet black hair that detangles on its own after an hourly moment of anxiety-fueled pulling, [5] Ivory-toned casing of skin that is designed with bruises and wound tinged with carminehue paints.
The environment is a vital part in making sure that she is wild enough, but not too much to bite the hands of those who feed her. A Barbie with no personality is a useless puppet in the industry. In order to hone her, better put her to use. (B) This world is her fighting den and this is the list of what she should be put up against with: [1] A house, not a home, one with a shoutproof post that wouldn't shake on all four corners that serves as the foundation of each reverberating walls, [2] The flooring has a built in music accompanied with lyrics and rhythm composed by every nonsensical
upbraiding out of their own disappointments from their own unrealistic and sky high expectations, [3] No window shall be built 'cause no play for entertainment is allowed in order to keep the naivety and ignorance to find no lacking in the hole of her own situation, [4] Rather, decorate it with bible verses and proverbs. Force her to swallow rosary beads of prayers and gospel songs by making it look like it will all soothe every turbulence of thoughts inside the corners of her mind that are yet to be discovered and invaded by the hands of the parents— who do not want nothing but the best for her.
This would build nothing but a woman of her own. A wolf in sheep's clothing; a woman in her walk-in closet, filled with skeletons she longed to bury. (C) Prevention is better than cure so to forestall is to kill the: [1] The brain. Burn every ideology of individuality to ashes. No action shall be done that isn't a part of the script, there are no visible ties to cut so there are no strings that controls every move of hers, [2] The lungs. Knock off the pair she has. Oxygen is cheap but the will to continue to breathe in order to survive is something you cannot afford. It is as reachable as the moon and with a baggage of millions of hesitations, anxiety and misery, [3] The heart. The urge to soar high is nothing but a product of mind. No cage to see and refer to as jail, so the rope on each of her hands and feet as well as the chain that chokes her are all a yield of her mind's hallucinations.
Kill the girl that she is so she wouldn't be a woman to fear when she grows up. (D) Give her a shower of
various types of abuse and let her soak in it and then leave her painted of blues and bruises: trauma-blinded and tears-drowned. In need of prohibition of: [1] Fits of rage to be spoken out, [2] Poetry of breaking free to be spilled, [3] Tears of regret to flow. (E) And then, let it continue for years. Let her think there is a stop at the end of every tunnel she will be in. Give it another birth for another being but let her watch as you decide to pitch in a pinch of gentle parenting and love in the guise of worshiping. And when she thinks she's not needed any longer, take her from her own zone of comfort and let her be an unpaid babysitter to the one you forced her to be a sibling of. Let the birth of her sister be the death for her. (F) Lastly, bury the remnants of the burnt ashes of her bones of rebellion against the normalcy around your perimeter. When she defines love with negligence and abuse, that is a sign of how you created the perfect eldest daughter the docile of her kind, waiting for the bones you will throw out.
Swinging My Legs Over the Creek.
Written by Aysha Nas
I hate my homeland like a daughter hates her mother.
I hate its green vines and ripped vines and the rippling water.
I hate the green vines that sit under my skin and the sea salt that sits on my lips.
When the open palmed saints that live between the trees of my backyard reach out and place their hands on my creaking chest, still leaking green moss filled water, They whisper reverently on the creaking hinges of my ribs and the space left for the disappointment of my soft hands.
I didn't want to live among the wild hens and houses with pebbles and swings and courtyards where the sound of rain elicited a sigh instead of a gasp.
When the beating wings of home call me, I step into the broken roads and walk with the wind as my companion.
Don't you always hate your home because you've left too many pieces of it behind.
I often wonder what occupies the confines of my mother's mind; I estimate that it is the bills that lie on the white, cola-stained table: grounded in haze and settlement, or perhaps a list of preventions to withhold my father's wild wiles: those that bury her deeper into the memories of why she fell, or even notes that dwell on the to do's: ones bespoke for the crisp pages of her fine planner, meant to leave the binds of thought but fail to do so. I should think that it would be simple if those were the occupants of her internal sanction, yet in the same breath I know it is an utterly blunt and selfish suspense, for I suspect that a vie for her mother breathes and scorns its beholder, I suspect that an unspeakable sense of dread drips off the values made up of dark ink, a loathsome grudge against my father's unfaltering happiness, and even the urge to burn what plans she has: barely any for herself and her desires but an abundance for a family.
my mother’s hands
Written by Therese Padus
My mother embraced change as I grew anxious at the thought of it. My mind often visits sublime recollections of what fiction our abandoned home was, from the rough surface of the walls that drew our living room as an oddity to the other spaces, the marble tiles that had sewn each room to one another, uniform oak furniture that reeked of an older then, and the token measured heights littered across my brother and I's shared bedroom wall, crooked
and imperfect, colored and mismatched, just as messy as everything else within the house, yet anything else would pale in comparison to the immeasurable fondness for it. Our home was something of a dream: built by childhood nostalgia and attachment.
I know in my heart of hearts that she rarely feels appreciated, that she succumbs to the oftenness of the instance, that she chalks it up to be something of an experi-
ence that all mothers witness, that as she furrows her eyebrows in distinct hurt, she quickly withdraws her grasp on the rusting knob of my bedroom door; her berating raps to the exterior of the black gate slowly fading into gentle, desperate calls for a daughter as she realizes that those feelings are left forbidden for a woman to feel for someone she's created; and I feel as though I'm 9 again, withdrawn from my mother's beckoning cradle as pleas of forgiveness accompany the tears that trickle upon her features. She cries sorry and I forgive, nothing has changed, and I suppose I've gotten what I wanted for fear of the very notion.
It is impossible for me to hate my mother, yet she is a perplexity that haunts as she kisses my forehead under the anonymity that the dark offers after she's forgotten her vow of silence to me. I've yet to gain the weight of my mother's love;
I suspect that she has yet to do so as well.
Written by Jasmine Rosa
while building sandcastles at the beach.
Quiet winter mornings snuggled in my blankets, stuffed animals hugged close making sure they're all warm, worried one of them is missing out.
Singing songs and telling stories, playing mermaids, fairies, princesses. Full of innocence.
Echoing laughter down now dark, empty halls.
Empty longing and sorrow for the child that once was.
Silent wracking sobs begging to be freed, rivers of tears, hand forced over mouth.
The scream lodged in my throat raging to get out.
The smile that never reached my eyes.
Anxiety and panic taking control, ruling my life.
Help me please, I beg of you.
Forever I am cursed, stuck in the morphing of memories, fading of words written and spoken. Begging, banging on the locked door of child innocence for all eternity.
Barely There
When I worshipped beauty, I misunderstood ugliness to be a kind of limitation. Ugliness was defined by its lack of beauty, it required reducing oneself to this thing the ugly. It was a deficiency, a permanent confinement. There was no freedom of movement in ugliness. The only way to escape it was to find beauty, hold onto it, maintain it. Like Michelangelo’s aspiration to draw the ideal nude, my search for beauty was relentless. Walking through the Albertina museum, I studied the musculature of the
Renaissance canon. The undying commitment to symmetry and proportionality. The quest to construct the most beautiful body was laid out in front of me in chronological order. This used to be the sole purpose of art, I thought: to depict only the most beautiful and superior parts of human life. To put beauty on a pedestal while denouncing the ugly. Michelangelo worshiped beauty just like I used to worship beauty. And while his figures were nearly perfect, it seemed that I had outgrown
the need for beauty altogether, like a pestering nettle sprouting in between daisies. “Art has become so ugly,” I said to an old man eyeing the designs for the Battle of Cascina. He stared back, blankly.
What I really wanted to say was: “I’ve become so ugly.”
A few steps into the next corridor of Albertina, and I’m standing face to face with the unabashed ugliness of Egon Schiele’s nudes. Emaciated figures with amputated hands and feet. Long, twisted legs. Yet, what defined their ugliness was not their crippled bodies. They know something, these hideous faces. Schiele’s
female nudes are not withdrawn or inhibited, they’re unafraid of their own nakedness. Their eyes are wide open, I see them just as they see me. They’re as knowledgeable of their presence as I am. Their unwavering gazes linger, they take up space. This is what makes them ugly: they’re alive. They seem to grip you by the shoulders and say “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.” Gustav Klimt’s beautiful women, right down the next corridor, were quite different. These fragile faces, lost in reverie. Their eyes either closed or in a weary gaze, too distant from real life to take part in it. Completely powerless against the artist,
against the viewer. Klimt's nudes are devoid of actual women. Devoid of any sexuality, autonomy, personhood. They’re caught in a faraway land that none of us can visit. Their bashful expressions and floating bodies are entirely disconnected from this dimension. Schiele’s women are ugly because they stare back at me, they live on with or without me. Klimt’s women are beautiful because they only exist when I see them. I keep looking at them, as though they might soon disappear. So ethereal they dare to fade away. To vanish. So distant they’re hardly present. They’re barely there.
That’s what it means to be beautiful. To be barely there.
The flapping wings of a dove. A dainty blade of grass. The smooth hum of the wind, the billowing movement of water. These are beautiful things.
These are fleeting things, so quiet they’re almost unnoticeable. Like Klimt’s naked women, they only exist when I’m paying attention to them. But they will soon escape me, they always do. The movement of the wind and water will cease to be perceptible. The dove’s wings will become heavy with age. The blade of grass will collapse under machinery or a rabbit’s feet. And what will be left is that ugliness in the eyes of Schiele’s nudes, the ugliness that makes them live forever. The rocks, the mountains. The erosion on their surfaces. The jellyfish and the worms. These are ugly things, these are things that last and persist. Ugliness is the freedom to be present and be aware of one’s own presence. The privilege to stare back at the spectator. To be ugly is to be so alive that the rhythms of your breathing can be heard at the ends of the Earth. Beauty is defined by its
mortality, it makes being alive an unpopular pursuit. To be beautiful is to enjoy the shortlived sublimity of being barely there, and nothing more.
I wanted to tell everyone in Albertina that I’ve become ugly. I wanted to say, in other words: “I’m here, I’m not going anywhere.”
I LOATHE THE SPICE, AND TRANSFORM INTO A FUSSY CHILD WHEN MET WITH THE LOVE CHILD OF PEPPER AND MINT.
MY FACE CONTORTS, STOMACH TURNS OVER, AND I DRY HEAVE. AS UNFORTUNATE AS IT IS, I FIND CARDAMOM CUNNINGLY LINGERING IN MANY THINGS THAT I LOVE, AND LORD, DOES SHE BLUR THE LINES.
IN WARM TEA THAT IS LIQUID HARMONY, SLIPPING DOWN MY THROAT, SHE IS THE SINGULAR CHORD PLAYED OFF-KEY. HOWEVER, THE UPSET THAT IS CAUSED IS MIRACULOUSLY CURED BY MY NEXT SIP, AND THE PECULIARITY GNAWS ON ME.
THE CURIOSITY NEVER LEAVES ME, BUT ALWAYS LEAVES ME BEMUSED, AS I TORTURE MYSELF TO FIND REPRIEVE ON REPEAT.
NOW I HOLD AN EMPTY CUP, DUMBFOUNDED THAT I HAVE GONE ON AN ADVENTURE WITHOUT EVER HAVING LEFT MY SEAT.
I AM BACK IN MY SENSES, AND I SMELL SOMETHING DIVINE. MY TUMMY DEMANDS AN INVESTIGATION!
SO I FIND MYSELF BY HER KITCHEN DOOR AND ALLOW MY LUNGS TO EXPAND WITH THE VERY ESSENCE OF LIFE AND WARMTH.
Photo by Sandy (@rosechintscottage)
Dedicatedtothewomanwhoraisedme
SHE FROLICS BOLDLY IN THE BIRYAN PERFECTED BY MY SWEET NANI FROM A LIFETIME OF TOIL AND PASS
AND AS WE BREAK BREAD, I VOW TO LOVE HER, EVEN IF I MUST BRUSH MY TEETH TO AND CHEW UP MORE MINTS THAN I C
WHILE I CLEAN UP THE TABLE AND WASH THE DISHES, I REALISE THAT I HAVE REACHED SOMETHING OF AN INFERENCE. WITHOUT CARDAMOM, THE FUNDAMENTAL EXPERIENCE IS AND WE ARE DENIED SOMETHING SO
Written by Icka C.
Once again, I am left standing in my magnificent hollowness, Narcissistic tendencies of belittling myself, Anxiety-ridden fear of not being enough.
I am great and I am proud, Standing tall and crying still. I am the victor, even if everyone sees me the loser. I am the king, and I'll rule my sadness.
Once again, I am left standing in my greatest woes, Lost from left to right, I move a step onwards. This fear of mine, I'll make it worth my smile, This smirk I wear shall be my demise.
I am the victor of my fate, the captain of this wrecked ship life. I am the one left standing, my hands clenched in agony. I am of the greatest and the best, Narcissistic enough to hide my fears.
Photo by Twen issue
I am the greatest and of the best, I am the winner even if I have lost countless times.
They'll sing my anthem of honor, with hands clenched to their chest and face solemn.
I'll win every time I crumble,
I am the greatest and the king, For years I have withstood this gaping hole, And even if nothing ever fills up my existence,
I'll still be the greatest and of the best, People shall sing my name, With drums and instruments in tandem with me.
Because I am the greatest and of the best, And the world will know it well.
Mirrored Mirrored
Written by Ria Miranda
As if this is where I start and where I end, I am treating all the things that are mine the way I wanted my mother to take care of me. My clothes are patched up on the weekends and I detangle my hair nightly. The food is delicious and the floor is clean. though these are desperate attempts. I take a glimpse of who I have grown to be, and grit my teeth, trembling at the sight of what I have fallen into; I am turning into my mother. it angers me. this is not her eyes, nor her mouth, not even the slope of her shoulders,
but to anyone who knows her in death, this is she. My mother loved me the way she knew how to love, but I was born out of her losses and her grief. Shaped from the wax of a candle burnt over a thousand times. fed with the scraps and the leftovers of whoever owns her world; it is not me nor my brother. and I know and see the way my darling brother looks at me. I recognize this stare like I have spent my two decades of living looking at our mother this way. There is enough love here, but it sits stale on the dining table. My pants are tight and the sink is flooded over. I have failed.
the flowers are injected with life by a warm breeze
Sinless and pure it feels like a dream C d t th i l th t it
Photo by: Aaron Feaver
Photo by: Ken Karp
I dreamt up mermaids and fairies
Realities through the eyes of dolls
In secret gardens, seeds were planted
The gospel found in girlish poems and songs
My wonderland contains glittering seas
Where mermaids dance underwater
And the flowers are injected with life by a warm breeze
So long as I have the eyes to see
I’ll close them and get lost
In a warm, floral reality
Sinless and pure, it feels like a dream
Compared to the violence that awaits me
Outside of the garden gates
Unlike Eden and poor Eve
My haven can never be taken A perpetual midsummer night’s dream, forever a child
Tender hearts are rewarded And the grasses grow wild For there is nothing sharp to cut them with
Where time moves slowly like honey
And mermaids rest on rocks
On the shores of my glittering sea
Photo by: Evan Tetreault
Written by: Cate Roque
I enter the nearest town on the back of a motorcycle and instead of waving palm branches, the staring kids hold up their lato-latos.
In the midst of clacking noises and baffling July heat, it's a solemn day to offer blood and, from the recesses inside me, open up my gateway into the unknown.
I use the body as I please (it could fall apart at any moment) and ended up here, sprawled out
A visit to the
PhotobyAnnaMarcel
Photo
women ’ s clinic
hoping the worst is over on the clinician's altar.
It's beautiful and it's terrifying, the sparkle left in my eyes.
It's like I never left November of '17.
I have so much love to give I could hand over my body completely to anything greater than me
There's a price to pay for that softness
It's cold and it's sharp and it pierces right through you, like the little time we have left
to find our place in the map of things, all metal and plastic and heartache, the things I find we live through to say it's good to be here.
For Her
Written by: Nana Rie
And as we're standing in the middle of the field, I knelt and held her hand. "I'm sorry." I whispered the words, a repentance. "I'm sorry for not becoming the person you want me to be."
She looked at me with sadness smiling in her eyes and asked, "Are you happy?" I stayed quiet for a minute, unsure of the answer. "How would you define happiness?"
"Are you free? From everything?" I was taken aback because no one had ever asked me that, only her.
I smiled and said, "I will be. Very soon."
"When you're happy. Tell me about it. For now, I'll be happy for the both of us." she said as she vanished from my sight like sand slipping through my palms.
And I realized, that no matter how many hours, days, weeks, months, and years passed, she will always know me. My soul, my mind, and my heart. As if nothing had changed, as if I stayed the same. My younger self will always recognize her older version, even after a decade or a century, even when the world doesn't recognize her, even when I, myself, am unfamiliar with my reflection.
For once, I am relieved and admit that I may not be the person she would be proud of, but I'll be the person she would be happy of. I'll try to fulfill some of her dreams, the little ones that mean so much. The green fields, a two-story house, and flowers all around. And I would apologize for the things she would not have. Childish laughter resonated inside the house, running footsteps produced by little feet, and baby cries once sundown.
I am sorry for the things I cannot give her, and I am sorry for the things I realized as time went by. This world is cruel. For her, for me, for us. In another life, I'll fulfill everything she ever wanted to be, but in this life, I'll be someone we never imagined to be.
An Amorous Subject Matter
WrittenbyJawahirAlamin
Unusually- your oars had composed certain poems
Each stroke had an entameter entameter’s ng by the ters.
Unusually- your oars had composed certain poems
Each stroke had an iambic pentameter And the pentameter’s beat is sung by the waters.
WRITTEN BY: SANTO SILVA
Two Sliver Rings
’ ve thought of m one physical orm to another, am
not
one
to
stand in the ra nor amI one to walk carefully stares, and n
I’ve thought of myself as inorganic; morphing quickly from one physical form to another, changing swiftly as the conditions ask. I am not one to stand in the rain and feel the water seep into my pores, nor am I one to walk carefully down flights of stairs. There is no wait, no stares, and no time.
To others, I was still the child who was always too late. I walked around with shirts that hung loose over my shoulders and shoes that didn’t fit me. I looked as sure as a sunflower on a cloudy day with lipstick too orange for my face. How was I to fit in if I was a woman in the skin of a small child, if not to tear it apart?
There was no waiting for a woman, no patience or understanding. I was either too young or too old. Inorganic, I had no minute to spare. The minutes turn into hours, the hours into days, and those turn into years.
So I stand in my mirror, my skin stretched to the shape of the woman living inside me; her arms outstretched and her legs longer as they strain against once baggy clothes; but I find myself looking in the mirror and seeing a young child.
The young girl with unkempt hair, fully drenched from the rain, as she rushes down flights of stairs and under the heavy pour of the storm. She has no minute to spare but wishes someone had, for her. On her fingers were two silver rings that irritated her skin, the bands too small. This is what she does for the only nice jewelry she has.
So I hold it in my palm for her; the day passes slowly as I watch clouds drift and disappear. The rings do not fit a woman’s hands, but, I am still as small th t il ings; so I run a thread through it and wrap it se I am organic and do what grow.
Oftentimes,extraordinarycircumstancesrequireextraordinary,out-of-the-box thinking,andit’snoteasytopictureyourselforthecircumstancesfroman objectiveview,but,itispertinenttoidentifyingarealisticoutcomeora plausiblesolution.Failingconsistentlyandpublicallyhasbeenacatalystfor buildingmyresilienceandflexibility.Beingperceptivetochangeandwillingto calibratemyapproach,Ihaverepeatedlyrefashionedmyselfandmycreative outletswithasenseofagilityanddetermination.EachtimeItransform,Idelve deeperintomyinnerworld,emergingwithastrongersenseofself,recognition ofmystrengthsandabilities,appreciationformyc bili i d i ofmycorebeliefs.
I grew up in a house of deafening silence. A house, where the scrape of a utensil would warrant a belt’s buckle. A house, where bringing the wrong pitcher would give me a new set of bruises. Where the wrong uttering would get me a sleepless night, kneeling, until the sun rose for a new morn.
As a child, I had always wondered why my mother chose to stay in this house when she was supposed to protect us, our childhood, our innocence, and whatnot. Why would she choose to stay in a house where our holidays were marred by the tension of a possible mistake, where hot, freshly cooked pasta ended up on her face? As a child, I thought packing up and leaving would be as easy as 1,2,3. We could leave it all behind, as long we had each other, how hard could it be?
But as I grew up, I realized it wasn’t as easy as I thought. She had bills to pay, our futures to secure, and a salary that could hardly sustain living. She did what she had to. She did what she could. She did her best to ensure we had a roof over our heads, a meal to satiate our hunger. She did what she did to keep us alive.
I know this and yet, as an adult, I still flinch at the sound of papers hitting a table. I still recoil when someone moves to touch me, as if the only skinship I would ever get is a slap for something I had done. I still freeze when I feel violence coming near me.
Kimberly Rose Lim
I know she did her best.
I know that she, too, is scarred by the unyielding shadows that will forever plague us.
She, too, is us, and we are her. She, too, is her parents’ precious daughter. Someone who enjoys the ocean’s breeze and belts out lyrics to a song lost in memory and age, someone who once danced under the rain.
I will never blame my mother for what she chose to do. She kept us alive, ensured we were breathing, but sometimes I wonder why he did what he did to the woman he claimed to love and care for.
Why did he choose violence instead of kindness? Why did he choose to give us nightmares when he could have chosen to give us sweet dreams?
How could he do all of this damage and call it his dream?
Had he only chosen the latter, we wouldn’t flinch at every thud of something heavy, or wonder when the slap would hit. Had he only chosen the latter, we would’ve never questioned if love was supposed to hurt, we would’ve never believed that if it didn't, it couldn’t be real.
Had he only chosen the latter, my mom wouldn’t have had to do what she did just to keep us alive, while depriving us of living.
thepast, thefuture, anddingyoldottoman
written by Celine Jafar
a love letter to the past, the future, and the dingy old ottoman
Isit on my dingy old ottoman as the light flows into the room through the frilly lace
curtain. My legs are pulled up, and I’m hugging my knees - not because I’m afraid of any monsters under the bed, mind you. We’ve actually become good friends ever since I moved in, or so I’d like to think; there are warm, amiable feelings on at least one side of the relationship. Naza is in the kitchen giving instructions to Tetya Khanum (enter new character: the cook and an old family friend) since, according to her, nothing ever goes right with the food unless she’s there to watch over the process. I’m not sure how they both manage to maneuver in that tiny square they refer to as kitchen, and I am willing to bet five manats (although I might be out of cash) that, in a few minutes, I will hear the chilling sound of a frying pan getting knocked off the stove and landing smack dab on someone’s foot. I’m almost certain it will then be followed by an “Ay, Allah” in that grating, dreadfully nagging voice that Naza does so well, with a long emphasis on the second “a” in “Allah” so that the sound lingers, echoing through the narrow corridors of the apartment.
Strangely enough, their sarcastic back and forth, sprinkled with the faint sound of the TV in the living room, is exactly what I need to clear my thoughts. After staying with Naza for almost two months, I have come to learn that this is the apartment’s peculiar version of silence. I’ve grown used to the incessant, albeit slightly comforting, hum of the yellowed fridge, the muffled voice of the news reporter on Channel One Russia talking about yet another “special military operation”, and the hoarse laughter of the neighborhood’s smokers that gather beneath my window exactly two minutes after I go to bed They must have a radar of some sort, I truly don’t know how they always get the timing right, no matter when I choose to go to sleep. All of the things listed above have, slowly but surely, become second nature to me, and the habits I’ve acquired back at home have, in turn, started to slip away. I suppose it’s the mind’s way of adapting to a new environment – like staying up all night to watch it slowly turn to dawn, and, finally, let morning take its place.
Sometimes when I sit on the old, dingy ottoman in what is now known as “Celine’s room”, I try to detach from anything on my mind that’s bothering me (or reality, if you will) and simply let my eyes wander. There are so many objects to marvel at. As much as Mama likes to say the place is a mess and is full of trinkets that needed to be thrown out long ago, that is precisely what fascinates my teenage girl brain The sheer amount of things that can be looked at, examined, and dissected for hours on end tickles my consciousness and makes me giddy in a very ‘I’m-just-a-kid-and-the-world-is-so-unbelievably-fascinating-and-big’ kind of way. The CD player sitting on one of the bookshelves is the same player that has been used for almost 50 years by different members of my family, some of whom are long gone. I like to
imagine my mom and my aunts on one particularly hot summer night of ‘97, jamming to 2Pac or Spice Girls while the parents were out. Or my grandfather putting on classical music as he worked in his office, irritated by anyone who so much as knocked on the closed door. Maybe, on days when he would be in a particularly good mood, he would put on old Soviet songs or even The Beatles, and insert educational comments about the origin of the song here and there I never got the chance to meet him, but something deep inside me tells me that he was an incredibly intelligent man, one who appreciated good music no matter the time period or the genre.
It is now almost three in the afternoon and I have been sitting on this ottoman with my legs crossed for almost an hour as I wrote myself into oblivion. My right one is most definitely asleep and, being an absolute child, I can’t bring myself to stand up because I’m scared to death of the tickly feeling that sets your whole body on fire. Tetya Khanum is done with cooking and is now transferring the food into a myriad of containers, some plastic, some glass – you never know what you’ll end up with in Naza’s kitchen. The sun is gently caressing my skin, and I think I might just follow my leg’s lead and slowly drift into an afternoon nap. It’s quiet moments like these that make me aware of life not as a concept, but as a tangible thing that lives deep inside my body and scratches its way closer to the surface each day. And I’m not sure whether I’m always doing the right thing, or whether I’m doing it correctly, but I know I’m doing what I love, and that’s the beauty of it.
Forever yours (then again, nothing lasts forever, does it?),
OdetoFilipino What Remai
In the Filipino psyche and manner of expressiveness, the desire to collect and keep items is rooted in our material conditions. Our society often sees possessions as a way to measure our achievements, how well we're doing in life. Each item we hold on to carries a weight of significance, not just its inherent value, but the memories and relationships they represent
My room, once a storage space, has maximalism as its default aesthetic. The act of decluttering and reorganizing has become a Sunday routine, a never-ending cycle that mirrors the low and high tides of life.
I once attempted to embrace minimalism, stripping my room down to its bare essentials. The lack of clutter, the simplicity of it, was refreshing, but it also left me yearning for a touch of warmth and personality It was as if the room had lost its soul among the sea of white walls and empty spaces. I found it lacking to my personal taste, like something was missing.
So, like a moth to a flame, it begins – the familiar refrain of ‘Maybe I'll add just one more thing’. And so, one by one, the objects returned A figurine here, a painting there, until my room once again resembled the inside of a witch's hut. Yet, amidst the seemingly chaotic array of items, there was a sense of harmony.
Each piece, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, had its place. Together, they created a space that was so ardently mine
writtenbyCharlize
Maximalismand ns Unsaid SanJose
As I was tidying up my room, my mom walked in and noticed me carefully arranging my collection of different statuettes on the highest left side shelf of my cabinet She suggested that I get rid of them or give them away since it was no use anymore. I refused.
'Sayang' a subconscious phrase I blurted out loud in the midst of expressing a number of sentiments. A sense of regret for its potential use A surging attachment that could fit right into the palm of my hand And a deep-seated desire settled in my mind to make the most out of what I have, as if an invisible string is silently telling me I should hold on to it while I still can.
Now, more than ever, we shall remind ourselves that the possessions we so deliberately settle in our homes are precious. Their innate worth lies within the idea of immortalizing ourselves, the emotions we felt, and each facet of our existence through the strong urge to connect.
