random scenes of cannibalism [excerpt]

I do write stories, but they are kept in anonymous places and written under secret identities somewhere in the corners of the vast, vast web. Just a hobby for fun and practice. Who knows, if I ever become an author or something, this blog is ready for future novel updates (As if. I've read enough authors' blogs that say it's not the best way to make a living). This is part of a much longer thing, scene in the middle of a war. I still got a lot to improve. Soon, I will write and post a complete story about college before I graduate.

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1.
Come morning, two masked men take her out of her prison, and made her eat. It was only when she smelled freshly-cooked food that she realized her hunger. She had no way to count how long she has been inside. The spell drawn over her made her weak. Everything has been a blur, a haze, it didn't cross her mind to escape. They made her sit and eat on a small table.

"Eat," one of them whispers to her, placing a plate of steaming meat under her nose, and the smell was like morning. She took the cutlery and ate mouthfuls of rice and ground meat in red tomato-syrup sprinkled with chili and peppercorns, chewing and savoring the warm food in her mouth. She ate plates of sizzling steaks lathered in rum gravy and candied onion rings. There was a dish of meat as soft as flan, her spoon slicing a perfect semi-sphere on the pinkish surface. It was some sort of skin and meat, a silk honeyed pudding glazed in thick white buttercream.

"It's delicious, right? Can't help but make a hungry girl eat," the other masked man says. "You are lucky to be our guest. Partake our choicest meat. That delicacy is expensive, and you might only taste it this once in your life," he said with a smile in his voice, glad to share their food. They both sat in front of her and watched, seeming fascinated with a hungry girl wolfing down mouthfuls of food.

"How does it taste?" they asked.

"Perfect," she answered between bites. "What meat is this? I haven't tasted anything like it before."

"The virgin womb of a girl your age, the other one was meat and steak cut from her thigh," he replies, and she sits straight and looks up for the first time and sees dead girls on the long countertop, all still fresh and cut in half. They are lying down, their heads propped along the wall, all of them are smiling. She can see it clearly from here, the clean insides of rib cages empty of hearts and lungs. The girls' identical long hair was wet, drawing wavy patterns across and between small pre-pubescent breasts, their skin clean and perfect in its pallor. Chopped girls laid next to chopped fish remains of sharks and bluefin tuna, and the half-girls placed beside the half-tails made the combined corpses look like bisected mermaids.

There were also reverse-mermaids, large fish-heads lined beside chopped human legs, young genitalia covered in crushed ice.

"Spoils of war. There is famine, and we can't afford wasted meat, can we?" the man said. She didn't puke it out like they expected or like she expected, but swallowed it all down. They tasted perfect, and a hungry starved girl couldn't resist any food. Then, she felt afraid, that she might be next to be slaughtered. They read her mind, laughed at her sudden shift in her chair, like a scared animal about to run away.

"You're special. We won't sell you for meat," the butcher said. "Eat. You will need all the energy to run away." She did. She ate it all.

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2.
I want the ocean, the real one, not this shallow illusion. You are my prison. Save me.
Kill yourself.

You will not die. Your death will be birth as I will change you, turn you into a new creature, I will give you nacre skin and rainbow fins, eyes that see forbidden colors, and you will be a the first of your kind. You will no longer breathe like a girl. You will cease to remember your name as you don't need one. You will see as I see, the depths, you will be one with creatures unnamed shining with bioluminescent skin as stars in space in the deepest trenches, it will be paradise. I have cities under the sea, cathedrals made of domed ribs of whales, pillars of winding coral, an altar of the shell of the great tortoise. Angler fish, narwhals, kraken would pass by and welcome you with hymns, and you will sing as they do. You will have new ears to hear them, their songs too wonderful for human ears to ever hear.

The creature showed her images flashing through her mind, like quick shimmers of water on the back of her eyelids. Glimpses and visions only hinted at, never fully shown. Yes, her closed eyes brimmed with tears as she saw them, beautiful as they were even if incomplete, that she's afraid her eyes might be inadequate to comprehend them.

What is your life, the limitations of your biology, come close to this?
I will give you what you cannot even imagine. I will make you siren, seahorse, crayfish, urchins, flounders, sea snakes, lampreys, lampetra, pacifastacus leniusculus, physeter catodon, prionace glauca, acipenser transmontanus, linckia laevigata, vibrio cholerae.
You will the first of your kind.
Set me free. Kill yourself.

The disembodied voice spoke of sorrows as old as thirteen hundred years, and all her life at thirteen was nothing compared to the creature's eons and eras of imprisonment. It carried the memory when the world was but one great sea, when it was called Ocean instead of Earth, when it was a lone unmarred sapphire sphere in black space.

Writing practice things

If I wrote on my blog as regularly as I do on my notebooks, I'd have 500+ entries by now, but I keep my crap to myself. But most of the time, I forget this thing exists. My notebooks are not journals, mostly it is a chaotic mishmash of my day, and a lot of random writing exercises I made up for myself. Sometimes I reread them, most of the time it is boring, sometimes I am fascinated by my own mundane life. It started with that Wild Mind book years ago, and the habit is hard to break. So, here are examples of things I've written (I'm posting it because hello I need something to post to fill this blog up with new stuff):

June: Life Lessons from Subway Surfers (I had to uninstall it from my phone, too distracting)
"Subway Surfers" is an addicting game, I even dreamed of it last night. I jump, somersault, air-fly through the eternal three-lane subway and try to be careful and try my best not to collide with trains and metal stop signs, not to slam my face and end the game, while avoiding a fat policeman also forever on the chase. I can think of it as a metaphor for life, it keeps on going on day by day in a subway of eternal days (that will keep on going on until I die), leaping forever. Even if I happen to face-wall through a train's windshield or the red-painted metal of attached storage boxcars, there is always another game, an eternity to play but I must stop thinking of that subway, instead focus on the real quizzes I will take today and at 7 AM sharp tomorrow morning.

Kamakhya, an aspect of Kali.

May: Religous Idols
When I was young, my mother forbid having religous icons in the house, mostly Catholic artifacts of pictures or statues of saints. My brother once got an Xmas gift of a simple stained glass with a picture of the holy family (with Jesus' heart out for all to see) and a generic prayer in Times New Roman. She gave it away. I wasn't in the communion rites of 90% of the class in grade 2. I dislike the solemn expression of the Christian saints.
I recall a sidewalk sculpting shop specializing in making Virgin Marys and all else. Plaster casts and cement filling a room made of bamboo and rusting tin roof. Praying, our lady of the sidewalk. I'm not Catholic, always thought their service too ritualistic. But now I hardly go to church. I grew up with my mom's religious conspiracy books saying the Catholic church as the real whore of Babylon, harbringer of the End of the World, Jezebel the Mistress of Sin.
I find more fascinating the statues of Hindu gods: four-armed Kali, pastel multi-colored heads of Kamakhya, white Shiva, blue-skinned Ramayana. Not sure, I don't even know if those names I wrote are the actual names of those deities. I should learn more about them. Mother Hydra, Cthulhu, Buddha. A paper-weight laughing fat Buddha, or the reclined one with fat lips and closed eyes.
I recall how once G pointed to a golden figure displayed in the library and arrogantly said, "They're their gods, search the net," and I shouldv'e answered, "Yeah, if you know so much then who are they?"

January: Fireworks are boring
Last night, I went to SM with my classmates to look at fireworks. I went home reeking with BO and other odors that clung to me from swimming in that crowd where I felt nauseous claustrophobia. It feels good to be in open air again. Straining my neck to look upwards the exploding things got boring quickly, and in that crowd I wished I never would have gone because my house is near and the view is pretty much the same from my window where I can sit without my neck hurt.
There were a few unique fireworks. Shimmering zooms. A little spark bursting in the middle of the sky and the tiny lights bursting into tiny explosions. Shooting stars with streaming, sparkling tails. Their finale favorite was that glittering chandelier thing that seemed to envelope the entire sky. After all, it's not every night there's a fireworks display, but I'm sick of it. It's the same, but now I have an idea why people flock to watch it.
Dinagyang, the actual festival on Sunday? That, I never learned to appreciate even if I was born here. I have never watched it live, only on TV.

ILLUSIONS: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah [review]

“What if somebody came along who was really good at this, who could teach me how the world works? If a Buddha or Jesus came to our time and landed in the same meadow with me, what would he say, what would he be like?” asks Richard Bach in his foreword to Illusions. Here he meets the mysterious ex-Savior Donald Shimoda, now flying around passengers on his biplane for a living, same job as his.

Ex-Messiah. Donald just decided to quit. He didn't like the crowds starting to praise him. He still can do miracles, though. His shadow passes over dead bugs and they fly away alive. He can walk on water, swim on soil, walk through walls. He can see the future but tries not to think of it. He's lived in many lifetimes here, in other worlds, and in different dimensions. He's been a wanderer lately.

“Stay in one place too long and people knew I was something strange. Brush against my sleeve, you're healed of terminal cancer, and before the week's over the crowd's there again. This airplane keeps me moving, and nobody knows where I came from or where I'm going next, which suits me pretty well.” He once walked off a crowd to the sea, and then disappeared.

He teases Richard with magic tricks at first. Richard wonders if Masters receive formal training or practice. Donald hands him the Messiah's Handbook & Reminders for the Advanced Soul, filled with epigrams.

Learning is finding out what you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, teachers. Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself.  Being true to anyone or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of the fake messiah.

Richard doesn't pray to him, they're just friends. Don quit because people only came to him for the miracles and not for his message. Don teaches him about life in unconventional means, even walks on the lake with him. He tells Richard that all of us are unrealized messiahs.

In the end, Don dies. He doesn’t come back from the dead, though visits Richard for the last time through a dream. Life isn't the same. The last page of the Messiah's handbook says: Everything in this book might be wrong.
 - - - - - 
The whole book's message can be summed up by this short parable in the foreword:

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all--young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."

The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!"

And the one carried in the current said, "I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure." But they cried the more, "Savior!" all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Savior. (© Richard Bach)

Where all lost things go

*I wrote this when I was desperate because I lost something important (not a diary). I found it four weeks later when I wasn't thinking about it, here all along. I have quite a reputation for being forgetful and absent-minded. 

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- - - - -

 She slumped on the chair, broom in hand. Strands of unkempt hair stuck on the moist sheen of sweat on her forehead and neck. A sigh of resignation. She's swept and overturned every corner of her room and the house, opened every bag and folder, rearranged entire shelves and drawers but she still didn't find it. I must have left it on the chair during class. But why would I leave it there when I always check? Appear! So she surveyed the room once more, swept, overturned, looked, reviewed her steps the day it was lost. Still nothing.

Stop tormenting me! Bring it back! The despair of something ultimately lost and irretrievable. The relief of finding it was just there after all (but not this time). She's ofen heard her mom complain to "them"-- invisible beings that borrow things only to "return" it to the place where youre sure you've placed that something. How many days has it been? Has someone read it? Well, my name's not there, but all my delusional thoughts, hatreds, and fantasies are there. Hell, why did I even write it all down!?

 After another unsucessful half-hour of searching, she ended up on the computer, googled "How to search for lost things". It suggested breathing exercises. Step 1: Don't look for it. Sometimes your stress doesn't make you clearly see what's in front of you, it says. Up to Step 13, which says Let Go. Simply accept it was lost. She skimmed another article on how to look for things using ESP and psychic powers, but she didn't read further than the first paragraph. Well, its just another notebook. Who'll know it was me anyway...

People always tell her she always looks lost. She's always looking for something. She almost has a talent for losing things when she most needs them. Her mother can't trust her with anything. They still haven't developed the software for my problem.

 The last thing she lost was her wallet with 2,000 pesos of tuition payment. She hasn't told her mother, she just starved in school for weeks to save it back. She lost five wallets before that. She's thought of going to school to look for it. The heat's outside unbearable and and her nth umbrella was left god-knows-where. No cash. She's lost her diary with her shittiest secrets not meant for anybody to read but herself.

 No, it wasn't filled with raunchy sexcapades (no potential or experience or appeal for that), it doesn't have classified information that will cost the safety of the country. She forgets everything but tells herself this is the last. But she loses another five things everytime she decides that, so not very encouraging. This won't work. Let's try the law of attraction: I will see it tomorrow, dancing in front of my face. I wish there was a spell for finding lost things. Where do lost things go?

PostSecrets (image heavy)

Postsecret, an anonymous community where secrets are submitted, has been one of my favorite websites since I discovered the internet. I've saved many secrets over the years, thinking that they might be used later for blog entries. Since I got so many of them with no entries written to go with them, I'll just post them all here.

 
I found out this was written by artist Frida Kahlo, the woman in the picture. She said this about some French artists: "They are so damn 'intellectual' and rotten that I can't stand them anymore....I'd rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those 'artistic' bitches of Paris." 
Okay, I'm now a fan. 

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True!

• Postsecrets on school and education

 

• Crime

 

• Family

• On being hot
• 
  
• Doubting oneself

 

I don't know how to categorize these:

Of course, secrets to lighten up the day a bit:

 

 

Some Zen koans

A koan is a kind of parable, anecdote, riddle or puzzle that doesn't need to be solved. It must be pondered on and applied to your life. 

(from Zen Buddhism, 1959)

Two monks, Tanzan and Ekido, were walking down a muddy street in the city. They came on a lovely young girl dressed in fine silks, who was afraid to cross because of all the mud.

      “Come on, girl,” said Tanzan. And he picked her up in his arms and carried her across.

      The two monks did not speak again till nightfall. Then, when they had returned to the monastery, Ekido couldn't keep quiet any longer.

     “Monks shouldn't go near girls,” he said – “certainly not beautiful ones like that one!”

     “My dear fellow,” said Tanzan, “I put that girl down, way back in the city. It is you who are still carrying her!”

- - -

A student came before the master Bankei and asked to be helped in getting rid of his bad temper.

“Show me this temper,” said Bankei. “It sounds very fascinating.”

“I haven't got it right now, so I can't show it to you,” said the student.

“Well then,” said Bankei, “bring it to me when you have it.”

“But I can't bring it just when I happen to have it,” protested the student. “I'd surely lose it again before it got to you.”

“In such a case,” said Bankei, “it seems to me that this temper is not part of your true nature. If it is not part of you, it must comes from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can't stand it and runs away.”

- - -

Bodhidharma left his robe and bowl to his chosen successor; and each patriarch thereafter handed it down to the monk that, in his wisdom, he had chosen as the next successor. Gunin was the first such Zen patriarch. One day he announced that his successor would be the who wrote the best verse expressing the truth of their sect. The learned chief monk Gunin's monastery thereupon took brush and ink, and wrote in elegant characters:

The body is a Bodhi-tree*

The soul a shining mirror:

Polish it with study

Or dust will dull the image.

No other monk dared to compete with the chief monk. But at twilight Yeno, a lowly disciple who had been working in the kitchen, passed through the hadd where the poem was hanging. Having read it, he picked up a brush that was lying nearby, and below the other poem he wrote in his crude hand:

Bodhi is not a tree;

There is no shining mirror.

Since all begins with Nothing

Where can dust collect?

Later that night Gunin, the fifth patriarch, called Yeno to his room. “I have read your poem,” said he, “and have chosen you as my successor. Here: take my robe and my bowl. But our chief monk and the others will be jealous of you and may do you harm. Therefore I want you to leave the monastery tonight, while the others sleep.”

      In the morning the chief monk learned the news, and immediately rushed out, following the path Yeno had taken. At midday he overtook him, and without a word tried to pull the robe and bowl out of Yeno's hands.

     Yeno put down the robe and the bowl on a rock by the path. “These are only things which are symbols. If you want the things so much, please take them.”

     The monk eagerly reached down and seized the objects. But he could not budge them. They had become heavy as a mountain.

     “Forgive me,” he said at last, “I really want the teaching, not the things. Will you teach me?”

      Yeno replied, “Stop thinking this is mine and stop thinking this is not mine. Then tell me, where are you? Tell me also: what did your face look like, before you were born?”

(*Bodhi means enlightenment. Though for me, both poems are true.)

PROM NIGHT: Strange Tales of that once-in-a-lifetime Night [review]

The invitation, the clothes, the theme, the night you'll always remember- or wish you could forget! opens Prom Night, a collection of short stories ranging from funny, strange, magical, and bittersweet, on that most-awaited event in high school. Almost anything you can imagine is here: zombies, vampires, elves, fairies, Greek mythology, unrequited love, UFOs, aliens, sex, and time travel. There's sure to be at least one story you'll enjoy.

In fairy stories the spell runs out at 12, but our characters always forget that. In 'Happily Ever After' a fairy godmother helps an awkward boy to the prom, but shows that love and happy endings don't need magic. 'Märchen to a Different Beat', has Hansel and Gretel, now older. A fairy godfather slash drag queen helps a gay Hansel get a date. It ends with a dance- Hansel and Jack from the Beanstalk.

'Omar's One True Love', his dreamgirl kills herself, but he must have her as a date. The solution- bring her back to life, but she wants to stay dead. Omar's condition: she can die again after the prom. It gets funny on the night he brings a zombie. In 'Bitterfly' a boy gets accused of killing his boyfriend due to drug-induced hallucinations, with a winged girl who may not be real.

'The Ancient Order of Charming Princes' tells what happens to Princes Charming after happily ever after. They're for hire as prom dates. As they reminisce about their pasts slaying monsters and saving princesses...

“Who would have thought we are now reduced to an escort service? Like a bunch of hookers in shining armor.”

“Gyrating and thrusting, that's what kids call dancing nowadays. Last time I saw anyone move like that was when you got ants in your codpiece.”

“My butt hasn't been this firm since the Renaissance.”

'Borrowed Lives' is a sad tale on memories from an old picture bought on a thrift store. In 'Music to her Ears', an old woman has a music box that brings her back to 1916. The best story may be 'Memory and Reason', a future where a boy and an alien girl choose to be together despite the odds.

If I were to design the cover, it'll be a rose corsage on a severed hand.