Month: March 2013
My Chocolate Heart, Broken Before Even Given
I was supposed to write something else, but something is telling me that this should go first…
I was reading Nisekoi, and this chapter is set in Valentines Day, which means the harem the girls will be giving Raku, the protagonist, some well-undeserved homemade chocolate as a sign of their affection. Among them is Onodera, the sweet-shy type in the harem, the one I’m rooting for even though it’s obvious that she’s not the author’s choice, and the main focus of the latest chapter.
She made the chocolate herself even though she’s no good in cooking and could’ve opted to buy instead. She overcame her inability to cook to finally create something good and with so much love that it is more than worthy to be given to the one she loves, as well as her shy nature just to try and give what she made especially for him and him alone, only for fate to trip her and break it under her weight, along with her heart…and mine. Love and fate, why must you be so cruel to the earnest?
Sometimes our hearts break because we gave it to someone. But sometimes it breaks even before we could, be it through our own clumsy way of giving it or fate’s merciless intervention. And perhaps the worst part of it is that what could’ve been so good, so perfect, so full of near-heaven bliss was denied from us before we could even take a shot at it. We could not even begin to ask why, for there is no answer, it’s just the way it is…or maybe that’s the answer love and fate has for us.
Oh, when will love and fate stop from breaking our hearts? When will they let us get what we deserve – for our hearts to not be broken and be loved back? Only God knows, I guess.
My Eternal Summer: The Beach And The Girl
Summer’s here, and you know what that means…well, I think each person who’d read this would give a different answer, so I’ll just be the one to answer my own question. To me, summer is no longer defined by a two-month long vacation because I’m already a graduate for two seemingly long years and currently employed, which is kind of a shame because it feels as if I’ve wasted ALL of my summer vacations. To me, summer is the time of the year when the climate is uncomfortably hotter and yet marked with an unexplainable feeling of freedom and elation, much so that you want to go wherever is fun whenever you can with whoever you want to be with, especially with that summer fling of yours, something I haven’t personally experienced yet, MY GOD I’M SUCH A LATE BLOOMER! Anyway, last but not least, to me, summer is about one place – THE BEACH.
I’ve already written about the beach before, some time in April last year on Tumblr (click here for link), but I don’t give a damn, I want to write about my favorite place in the world again. Heck, I’d probably write about the beach every summer of my life it’s just oh so magical – the soft white sands, the clear sapphire seas, the tranquil lapis skies, the view of faraway mountains, the ever-stretching shoreline and the foaming waves that forever kiss it over and over, the soothing breeze and the leaves of palms that dance as it blows, the cool drink you sip as you look at what seems like eternity while the sun scorches you dry, the beautiful lady strangers with smiles as warm as the weather and glistening skin under a pleasingly thrifty yet elegant two-piece frolicking along the waters, your friends doing crazy stuff that you can’t let pass, and last but not least – HER. The only one more beautiful than the beach.
She wears a brightly-colored swimsuit under a white summer dress that sways with the summer wind, shades, and a straw hat, sipping on a cool drink as she gazes on where sky, earth, and sea meet. I draw closer to her as if it’s nothing and ask her why she’s not wading or kicking sand into someone else’s eye just like the rest of us, and she just tells me that it’s more than enough to look at such a calming and magically beautiful sight, and I couldn’t help but agree with her, except for one thing, so I tell her “yeah, it is, but you know what, you’re much more beautiful than the beach, that coming from a guy who loves the beach a lot and wishes to see it every summer of his life. Because of you, summer no longer means going to the beach, for I am more content with spending every hot day of it with you”. She then blushes like a fruit and says “…thanks James. Actually, I got something to tell you as well. Meet me here tonight, okay?”, so I wait until the sun has set and the stars and the moon has shown themselves and go where she told me to. There she is, sitting by a small yet bright and warm fire, staring into the dark ocean, all the colors around her like a seemingly washed mix of orange and purple. She tells me to come sit next to her, so I do. “What is it?” I ask her with a smile on my face. “Close your eyes” she tells me, so I follow her, and next thing I know I feel something soft and wet, so good that I can almost taste it – sweet. A kiss, followed right after by a confession. “I like you James”, she sweetly says, and after that it’s as if I could no longer hear the waves crash nor the wind blow, as if I’m no longer in this world because of how surreal-sounding the things she said are, and all I could do is stare at her, so close that I could almost taste her breath, and slowly curve my lips into a genuine smile. A few seconds later, I finally recover my wits, so I tell her “you’re so not fair. I was supposed to confess first” and then draw my lips closer to hers. Too bad though that all of this is just in my manga-inspired imagination.
Come to think of it, I’ve never been to the beach with a girl I like. A girl I love in a place I love…sounds like paradise. We’d talk and sip cool drinks as we stare at the ocean and each other, swim, splash on each other, tell her the exact same quotes from The Beach, a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio (it’s one of my favorite movies, it’s scenery porn meets deep introspection) while Porcelain by Moby plays in the background, and maybe even…nah, I’m not into that, being with her on the beach is more than enough. And if it’s with Lin, maybe I’d ask her to do something like these:
http://deugenio.deviantart.com/art/Yuna-Sending-173025787.
http://s482.photobucket.com/user/Rikku-no-Cosplay/media/Cosplay/FFXPaysage12.jpg.html
http://www.nerdist.com/tag/cosplay-friday/page/2/?full
Link is unavailable. Sorry to the cosplayer and uploader, I can’t give credit. But this shot is beautiful.
http://www.facebook.com/Endiru
Or even a pair cosplay that’s something like this:
http://s482.photobucket.com/user/Rikku-no-Cosplay/media/Cosplay/FFXPaysage9.jpg.html.
Whoops. Wrong Yuna. But still a good Yuna.
Sorry, I guess I got a little bit too carried away with all the Final Fantasy X Yuna cosplay pictures, it’s just that I couldn’t find any other character who wears an elegant Japanese priestess-inspired dress and not be out of place. Damn, I’m sure Lin would be a perfect Yuna. Or Aya Toujo. All she’d need is a red two-piece. Okay, I think that’s too much, I’ll just wait for the real Aya Toujo.
…that’s enough pain in one sitting, right Fernan?
I wrote all of this because I couldn’t contain my excitement for tomorrow, for I’ll be going to the beach with my friends in the office, and I heard my beautiful boss wears a two-piece whenever she does. The only shame in it is that it won’t be with a girl I like. But I swear, in the future, it will be with her, be it Lin or someone else. Maybe even with Aya Toujo herself. Me, the beach, and the girl I love will meet, just like how the heavens, earth, and seas do in the beach.
Writing About Not Writing
I can’t believe it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve posted something…what have I been doing with my life? A lot, actually. I’ve been playing too much League of Legends and DoTA 2, reading too much manga, going to work at 2 in the afternoon and going home at 10, and Lin ♥, not to mention my previous weekend escapades – great sources of inspiration I could’ve written a great deal of things about, and I have written nothing – a bad testimony for someone who professed that writing is his mistress, not to mention a horrible waste of the muses I have been granted. So once again I’ve decided to write, this time about why I’m not writing.
I wonder what’s stopping me from returning to my first love and making art for her once again? Perhaps the chief culprit is gaming. I wake up in the morning, read a little manga, play, go to work, go home, read a little manga again, play again, then finally sleep, and it doesn’t help that a LoL/DoTA session would last for either 30 minutes at least and an hour and a few minutes max, and by that time I would’ve written what others would already consider as a long post that they wouldn’t read. And the feeling of wanting to play to recover from a loss or finally be satisfied with my performance despite being victories doesn’t help. Damn, if only MOBA games weren’t entertaining and addictive, couldn’t help but wonder if what they say about them being from the devil is actually true…
And then there’s me just being me, too emotional about stuff. When I’m extremely pissed, downcast, or worried, the writer in me is essentially disabled. It’s as easy as ABC to write when I’m happy, smitten, angry, or even sad (sometimes it’s even easier to write when I’m sad), but when anger or sadness gets too extreme, it’s a near-impossibility, and much more so with worry. When I’m worried, I can’t even play nor read manga or watch anime, all I could do is pace around and stare blankly into my Facebook news feed, needlessly thinking in vain about unwanted possibilities I have totally no control over. For hours. A waste of not only inspiration but also time that could’ve been put used for better or equally unproductive things that would’ve made me feel temporarily fine.
Another would be sheer laziness in general. Believe it or not, writing takes a lot more gray matter compared to my other hobbies even though it’s pretty damn enjoyable, much so that I would pick it over all of my hobbies, with the exception of reading manga and being with my friends and Lin because the four of them kind of rank equally in my heart. Anyway, my point is that because of my laziness to write, what could’ve been great topics for writing that randomly pop in my head just effervesce into oblivion.
Also included in the list is having a lot to write about but not being able to decide which. With a crazy mind like mine that unnecessarily thinks about unnecessary things, the problem is not the scarcity of inspiration but the overabundance of it, much so that I spent so much time that could’ve been used to write for thinking what to write about, only to end up not being able to decide altogether, or even worse – scrapping whatever I’ve written even though I’m already halfway to jump to another topic, and then achieving the same result. It’s like deciding which among the equally beautiful girls I have 100% chance of getting together with but ending up with none of them because of my indecision. Just like a deconstructed harem manga.
Last but not least would be timing. Because I am a very eccentric person, I have posts that for varying personal reasons cannot be released the same day they were completed. Problem is that some of them never even get near completed and get eternally damned as drafts because I either get too lazy, distracted, or uninspired…mostly lazy.
So, here I go, now that I’ve written about writing or not writing, hopefully I’d already gotten back my inspiration and momentum to write about anything and everything. Although I don’t think inspiration is what I need, but actual determination to pursue my mistress, my one true love – writing.
The Master Of Puppet’s Heartstrings Of Fate
They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice. But even the most powerful forces of nature cannot hold a candle to fate.
It all began in another unplanned and unnerving overtime session in the office when my phone received a message. At first I thought it was from father who is too incessant with his calls and messages whenever it’s past eleven and I’m still not home or one of those people who keep including me in their general messages even though I don’t know them personally or reply, until I checked my phone. It’s from, it’s from…
LIN LING! It was totally unexpected but totally hoped for. She was asking me if I could come with her for OXP, the cosplay event at SM Centerpoint (Sta. Mesa) the following day. Oh I would love to, but there was one problem – my shift starts at 2PM. No matter, I could just screw work, right? NO! Decent girls don’t like irresponsible guys who don’t have their priorities straight, so I had one last recourse to hit two birds in one stone – ask Ma’am Gab, my supervisor, to change my work schedule for that day. I told her the truth, She laughed after I told her the truth, all but the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God and all His angels (except the six) and the saints up in heaven…HALLELUJAH, I GOT THE HOLY GREEN LIGHT, so I shone it to Lin by replying to her with lightning speed as confirmation that tomorrow is already as certain as the dawn.
My preparations began as soon as I got out of the office and bought a razor, for I know Lin likes a clean shaven man, and continued it when I got home I readied my costume, money, phone, heart, body, soul, and the most important – my sister’s DSLR – something that should never ever be taken out of the house according to father’s orders because he just can’t get over how pricey that damn thing is and how pricey the repairs would be if it gets broken. BUT NO! I sneaked it in my bag when he finally slept, defying his order for Lin, as if he’d actually know that I took it out anyway. Leaving home in the morning with perhaps the biggest backpack I ever carried my entire life that contains something that would get me killed if it gets broken…what great exhilarating joy! One small step for badassery, one giant leap for Lin.
I got to SM Centerpoint unexpectedly and unnecessarily early thanks to me underestimating how fast the shuttle is from SM Bicutan to Lawton and how fast LRT lines 1 and 2 are, so I took the extra time to practice shots with the DSLR because I barely even know how to use it. After all, Lin wouldn’t want an untrained and inexperienced shooter, even though that’s what I am. Finally, after wandering and idiotically doubting and thinking I’d get stood up and all of it would be for nothing, she arrives. Glistening ebony hair, pristine fair skin, crescent eyes that has captured the shine of all the stars in the universe, glossy cherry lips, her body wrapped in a rainbow-colored blouse and shorts, blinding me with divine radiance, and finally melting me when she said something about me totally getting my Sasori on. Truly, her beauty in mortal vestments surpasses even those who were already in costume…much so that it had already drawn in Aldrin.
I wouldn’t lie – it fazed me, almost discouraged me even, how he was so persistent and pursuant of Lin and taking her photos. After all, he had every damn right to be and Lin had every damn right to come with him for he was a true photographer, unlike me who’s a faux-tographer. She was just going to change, I was just supposed to wait for her at the event hall, but Aldrin came with her, and it almost disheartened me that I thought I’d rather go with my other friends…I REFUSE! I did not ask Ma’am Gab to change my work schedule, sneak out the DSLR and risk breaking it and getting into trouble, and wake up early in the morning and travel almost an hour away from home for nothing! I was the one she texted, not him! She is with me, not him! Man up James, you are Sasori of the Red Sand for Akatsuki’s sake, damn it! I was cosplaying a missing-nin, but a ninja nonetheless, not just a ninja, but an oyakume, and if there’s something an oyakume does, it is to protect the princess – hime, Lin. I didn’t know which washroom she was in, but somehow my inherent sharingan led me the way, for I saw a washroom with Aldrin outside of it, so I stood there exactly right in front of him. I looked at him, and it is quite intimidating how he obviously knows his DSLR well just by holding it and got his car keys strapped on his pants and wore thick glasses that gave him an air of that hipster intelligence, but I can’t let that beat me, for I had a new mindset – that Paolo Lim mentality of being a confident alpha male. I have red hair, looks, and spontaneity – this guy will never defeat me, for I am Sasori, no, for I am James. And when Lin came out of the washroom as Karuta Roromiya of Inu X Boku SS, as we bought Pocky and lollipop as props for her character, up until the time I had to leave, that confidence was reaffirmed, for she was talking to me and I to her most of the time. He may be good with the camera, but I was better at pulling the strings, although he did succeed at persuading Lin to join the catwalk. Too bad though that I would’ve left by then because of work…
We just chilled, talked a little, watched the program, and took some practice shots of her (a lot actually), but when you’re in an event with someone as pretty as Lin, you really can’t be totally alone. Photographers, passers-by, fellow cosplayers…I don’t really mind it, it’s fun actually, especially if they’re friends with either her or me or the both of us, but if it’s a psychopath of a photographer named Jomar who watched and imbibed too many anime who told Lin he’s a yandere and wants to cut her head off ‘cuz she’s cute, then he’s almost gonna see some forbidden jutsu. Almost, as he explained whatever crap he said and all is forgiven, but you NEVER, AND I MEAN NEVER, threaten to hurt Lin. YOU JUST DON’T. Well anyway, it’s cool, except Jomar and those dirty leeches that come in packs whose minds I can obviously read whenever they ask for a photo with her, gosh I want to torch them…not that it mattered afterwards anyway, for even though they may take a little bit of Lin’s time by badgering her one after another and take a lot of her photos, they’re still not the ones who Lin is with. And sure, we talked with our friends, but she did not come with hers and I did not come with mine. For that time, we were with each other. Only that time. Oh how I wish it could be forever.
Talking, taking shots, shooting a video of her doing the Nyan dance, going round and about – if all we did in Amore was chat and chill, then it was almost the polar opposite in OXP, much so that all we ate is Pocky, or maybe that’s because Lin didn’t want to eat ‘cuz she wasn’t hungry and so was I. Besides, I’m on a diet too, and who needs glucose when love is your energy, right? After all, it was a dream, and in a dream you don’t do anything aside from letting it take its sweet course, and that’s what I just did, hence we bought more Pocky and two big lollipops. But after the four hours we shared that felt both like an eternity and a second, I had to leave…
It was already 4PM, I was still in Manila, and I still had to go to work in an hour. Much as I wanted to screw work and betray Ma’am Gab’s trust to be with Lin the entire time, I could not. I had to show her that I have my priorities straight, thus I had no choice but to play Cinderella on Snow White. As I told her that I regret having to go, she told me that what’s important is that I came and had fun. It’s just something simple and probably doesn’t mean much, but it means a lot coming from her, for I know that she does appreciate what I did, she does appreciate me.
Everything fell into place – the DSLR, the Spiderman shirt pertaining to Peter Parker who happens to be a pro photographer (although I’m far from being one, but we’re getting there), Sasori who believed in art and beauty lasting for an eternity, and Lin just being there with me…it was more than good, even though I had to spend Php200 for the taxi to work so that I wouldn’t hit the 1-hour late mark and had all my adrenaline flushed out because I already parted from its source. It wasn’t just a dream, it was more like a dream-like reality. It was my second shot, my proof that Amore wasn’t a fluke and that Lin and I truly could get closer. And all the rules I have broken…what of it? I’m pretty sure everyone can understand a guy breaking the rules for a cute girl, right?
PHOTOS:
For more photos, click HERE.
I put the I in the UNIVERSE. I hope I can put U too. 
