T. DE LOS REYES

All religions will pass, but this will remain: simply sitting in a chair and looking in the distance.

why why why why

It is an illusion you were ever free

Ano ba ang buhay? Ano ba ang panahon? Hanggang kailan ang pagsisikap, at para nga ba saan? Saan tayo nanggaling, at saan patungo?

He didn’t speak of the pain, never said a word about it. Sometimes his face would quiver, he’d close his eyes and clench his teeth. But he never said anything about the images he saw behind his closed eyes. It was as if he loved the pain, loved it as he’d loved me, intensely, unto death perhaps, and as if he preferred it now to me.

Kay lungkot at kay pait ng mga Midnight Express na pag-ibig ni Perez. Subalit kay tapat. Wala na marahil mahihinging higit pang kadakilaan sa sining.

They tend to have fewer pictures in the family photo album alone, compared to firstborns.

The flesh is easy to satisfy. It’s the heart that is insatiable, the heart that needs to love, to despair, to burn with any kind of fire…That was what we wanted. To burn, to be consumed, to devour our days just as fire devours the forest.

When you’re twenty love is like a fever, it makes you almost delirious. When it’s over you can hardly remember how it happened…Fire in the blood, how quickly it burns itself out.

And aren’t the most beautiful follies the ones linked to love?

I’m not sentimental—I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last—the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.

Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.

I wonder if it’s possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.

5. THE MOVEMENTS OF THE ARM

At this point, I should just go ahead and admit that writing occurs slowly. Sometimes to the point of no writing at all. An assemblage as much as it is a cutting, the equilibrium in language seems to me imaginary. At the tip, at the furthest end, I cannot offer anything but the “I.” The problem is, it takes a while for body to be covered only by skin. The bones have to project more and more between muscles and tendons, the head not to be pinned down by some idea of truth and to strategically come together with the sacrum so that the two pelvic bones may form a bony ring. And at this moment, if anything at all happens to [my] writing, nothing happens to it but touch [Nancy, Jean-Luc] and some genital contractions.

Without sound, celebration and grief look nearly the same.