I am not sure why you began doing it but

Thanks for always asking how I am.

Practically, it compels me to evaluate myself and not leave my mental state to where the winds blow.
Emotionally, I am somehow assured that I am not alone.

When I talk to you, my words naturally become rushed and hurried--barely a pause between phrases, even sentences. As if the mind always remembers that there isn't much time to know you, before I fly again. And if I wanted you to know me too, what I only have is a mosaic of short car conversations to offer.

But perhaps, it is best to slow down and let words sink deeper. To breathe and think in between spaces, before I flip through another canvas of musings. Because I myself get lost as to where we drove through and I'd wonder as I alight, if we were even painting on the same canvas.

So I will try to lengthen my strokes and take time to mix my colours on the palette. Though days would quickly count past, I hope there would be enough to make a caricature of each of us to place on our rearview mirrors.

Flying makes me wonder where home really is.

My thought while on the plane back to Melbourne from my winter holiday in Brisbane last July.

I am honestly beginning to think that I have unconsciously boxed my current life theme to that of flying and of home but what can I do?

My stay in Brisbane was short and sweet. I could only be there for sixteen days but without doubt would I say that I grasped every moment I had—not so tightly that I would lose my sense of the future but more than enough to take the present to heart.


09/07 My flight to Brisbane was delayed and even had to land on a different airport for security reasons. It was already midnight when we were allowed to go down the plane so public transport was impossible and we had to wait for the arranged coaches to arrive. The waiting in the airport took forever but the thought that a second passed was a second closer to seeing my UQ4 family kept me sane.


12/07 This was shot while we were traffic volunteers for the third night at the Oceania Convention. If I learned one thing from that event, it would be that there is in fact so much power in us that is waiting to be released.


15/07 My first time baking a cheesecake with Esther. Yes, it is a baked one. No, that black bottom is the tin.

 17/07 And this is Esther! There is a lot to say about her but know that she is a wonderful sister of mine. I would keep coming back to Brisbane for her.

 17/07 Kuya and David at the edge of the waters; for the light will never flicker even as we tread the unknown. Spending myself with them for the kingdom is probably a big chunk of what Brisbane means to me. I would admit that at times, I would struggle of thoughts of transferring to UQ because labouring with them feels lighter a burden than travelling alone but I know where I am called and surely I will see them again.

19/07 Rachel and Xi's wedding card made from coloured paper. I hope that I do not forget in the future but at that moment when Rachel walked down the aisle, for the first time in my life, marriage made sense to me. The air shifted and I felt it. The place was filled with love and it kept washing over me. I had no idea until then that a bond created in such faith and hope would create an atmosphere as that. It was really a revelation to me that I think I may have a small soft spot for weddings now.


After flying from Brisbane before in February, I did not expect that doing it again would make me feel a bit heavyhearted but it did. Being in the presence of people who are very dear to me simply made me want to stay for longer. However, send me I said and here I am once again in Melbourne.

Send me I say.

Daddy, please don't forget.

When you began speaking about how you've been doing in the past days and how it's getting more difficult for you to recall information since the accident, I immediately felt scared. In the same way that you cannot remember our house address anymore, I was anxious that maybe after time, you won't even remember my own name that you yourself came up with and is based on your very name. I feared that maybe it won't be too long until I lose the person I made sure my choice for my last meal in this life will remind me of. I felt uneasy that maybe flying away was actually a mistake. It suddenly seemed so wrong to live two hours ahead of you and to not be able to spend even a minute with you each day. I thought that everything was meaningless—that being a so-called academic achiever was worthless when I couldn't be a daughter by your side. I know I can lose anyone I deeply value at any moment and that there is a very slim chance that I will have the opportunity to be with them at their last moment but please, until the very end,

Dad,remember this child.

Jasmine

But only when you get close enough to catch their hurt will they be close enough to catch your love. 

-John Ortberg

You were the type of girl I easily fancied (in a not sexually-attracted way). You were quiet, petite, and planned to take an Arts major. We were from the same foundation program but I didn't think that I'd get to talk to you a few more times since I never actually had a history of being real close to arts people even if I would love to. I would have to thank you for that smile you gave me during our first break that did give me hope of that and as Maths was ending earlier, I was already feeling a little giddy inside because we said we'd go to Commonwealth Bank together and I knew the way.

We didn't go though—not because you forgot or anything that sounds mean like that, but because you were hurting. I saw it myself in the wrinkle of your brows when you said your stomach hurt and your arms clenched around your waist. I felt it myself in the shaky tone you talked to your mom over the phone over stretches of waters, even if I couldn't understand a single word.

You said the pain was like waves crashing into your body, rhythmically sweeping up and down. I couldn't quite catch your every word as you made me less of a stranger but I'm certain that you told me twice that you hair was long before and you cut it when you had lost control of yourself because of that same pain and for a greater number of times that you just wanted to go back home, away from this environment that didn't suit you at all—no, maybe not yet—and be close to your mom and grandmother.

You are not an evergreen, are you? I have realised that you are a deciduous kind and for the past days, it has been autumn on your side of the world. I wonder if it got through you that I was glad to have been with you even if it was when everything around you was falling. You really didn't burden me as much as the question that keeps running in my head: will I see you tomorrow? Autumn may be the one that I love best, but it glimpsed my imagination how it would be to spend every season with you and that felt rather warm.

E as in Eagle

They told me that when I left, you cried in that place I call home. Well, they didn't actually say where but where else would you? To you, I am tied to the pillows and plastic containers you fix for me every morning. I am the question, disguised in a statement, begging for stories of your days in your home and other people's homes you've been in. I am the quiet hush of the wind calming you down when you think you failed to meet people's expectations. I am the hand helping when there are burdens to carry. I am the catalogue of things you like not hesitating to treat you ice cream if money is at hand. I am the adventurer bringing you along to grocery stores and fruit shake stands filled with the confidence that we always return alive.

I am the forgetful who will ask where this and that are. I am the messy who will leave the bed unmade in whatever time of the day she wakes up. I am the hungry who will go down the stairs to take food from the pantry every five minutes or so. I am the lazy who will not care so much about cleaning her stained clothes herself. I am the adventurer who set out on a journey away from home unsure if after time, home will still be home.

Gratitude

the guy who told me my presence made him feel alive

the guy who stays despite my brokenness

the father who understands

the girl whose light never fades

the mother who wakes up each morning out of love

the girl who notices the struggles

the brother who believes you can

the sister who believes you are

One Plus One

Thank you. I know it's overused to the point that sometimes it's only said out of habit or courtesy but right now, I'm saying it out of an overflow of this comfort and understanding that you have given me. From my pulse to the lub-dub, all of me screams, "I love you."

I know it's overused to the point that sometimes it's only said out of gesture or expression, but I have (recently) learned to say it only when I truly mean it. I am aware that you deserve more than my kind of love to you. You are due far more than my half-hearted replies of happiness to time spent together. You are worth more than this conceit that I constantly show. You are a truer bundle of sunshine.

Know that even though it pains you whenever you remember that time is very limited on us, I carry with me that moment you spoke for me.

Found and Lost

It pains me whenever I see myself looking at you in the most negative way possible that my—as my friend would say—mammalian brain could ever imagine. I hate it that my mind has decided to look at you in such a manner. Disgusted. Detached. Anything but love. Sure, there are still times when I think of how you're doing and if you're fine—while walking on the corridors or sitting on a bench doing my notecards—but why is it that when you interact with me, all I feel is repulsion? A want to just run away from you as quick and as far as my legs can carry me ignites within me, although all that happens really is an impassive "Sure." What are you to me now, really?

Am I being a coward again? Desiring to escape from your presence? I still don't understand. I'd like to sit down and talk with you—about anything under the sun, really. But when it is you who comes over, I abhor it. I cringe when you ask to borrow my eraser or ask me Math questions. I shudder when I hear you comment about my time and space. Tell me. Why have you become so repulsive? I don't doubt that all you mean when you speak to me now is what you speak. Nothing more, and nothing less. So what is it that kills me everytime?

Maybe it is exactly that. Maybe it's the realisation whenever you speak to me that we are no longer together, that you were just a part of my past now that makes me feel annoyed. I don't think we wasted our time then. I don't think it was a bad thing that happened to us. But I guess, it's just really hard when you're reminded what once was.

No, I don't want to get back together. That is the least that I would want to be given. Right now is after all, better. Best. Apt for the moment. Right. Is it now fact that from here on, we will be going our separate ways—never again to feel our heartbeats in sync with one another even for just a moment? Is this really goodbye? 

I would like to tell you that I'm rather happy still. I don't doubt that you are too. I pray that aftertime we both find ourselves chasing after dreams we were really meant to chase.

//unedited, spur of the moment

DM

This is the first Christmas gift I got this year and it's actually a two-part disc.

I honestly had no idea what this had inside and what that DM marking meant, but today, after two days of staying in my bag and being useless, its contents have finally come to my understanding and amazement. DM stands not only for my name, Dalzy Mendoza, but also for the subject of the videos in it, Discrete Mathematics.

Someone actually gave me a disc filled with Mathematics lecture videos! This person wants me to get seriously better at Math! I feel flattered that someone like him who's very proficient in Math thinks that I have what it takes to learn lessons beyond my current curriculum. I shall not let this go to waste and actually listen to them. If I can marathon anime videos, then I can do this too.

Here's to a productive Christmas break!

Homophone

Have you been using the socks I gave you? How about the box of handkerchiefs I gave you last Christmas? Have you opened it?
Do you think of the times we'd stumble and help each other up? Are you still that stick-man holding on to that iron bar?
--
Stop giving me questions whose answers I'm still searching for, but ask me. Stop saying things that chip off parts of my wall, but tell me. Stop lingering in my mind for too long, but confuse me. Keep me in that compartment but never ever show me the key.

Pathetic and Conceited

Your words had cut me hard and deep, but I only smiled back at you; and I will keep on smiling because no matter how much tears I silently shed, you already hold a part of me.

How David Won Over Goliath

Meet Kuya Dave Agbayani! I first knew of his existence on the bus ride going to Rizal for the Xtraordinary Youth Camp. He basically dominated the microphone in the bus and just kept cracking jokes, one after the other. Most were corny and some were, as Bus 3 would say it, "KADIREHHH." What made most of us really laugh was his laugh. It was half laughing and half gasping for air. Little did I know that this super sabaw person would actually be one of the people who would make the greatest impact on me in the camp.

We weren't groupmates, and surely we weren't roommates either. We never shared a table for lunch. Our only conversation went something like this: Mendoza? Here. However, ever since that first worship night at camp, I had resolved to tell him how amazing he was. It was because that night, I first heard him sing.

The sky had already gone dark. The sound of a ball dribbled in the court had long ceased. The cafeteria had closed and there were no people sitting on the benches under the big tree. Lying in the cabin, one could hear a faint sound of music from the main hall, but no one was in the cabins. With arms raised high and voices filled with awe and wonder, everyone was in the hall singing in His name. It was no exaggeration to say that everyone was crying their hearts out, and that included me.

It felt amazing. It wasn't only because I was worshipping Him, but also because I was worshipping Him with all those people around me. I wasn't walking alone in faith. No one was. As I glanced at the people on stage, my eyes fell on him. His head was titled up and his eyes closed. He had such a peaceful look on his face. I could feel that he was truly moved by God--filled to an overflow of His love. He didn't sing much on the microphone after that, but it didn't matter. His voice might had drowned in the harmony of everyone's, but the atmosphere around him was beyond words to describe. Basking in the light of His grace. That was how it probably was.

I have been hoping to hear him sing in church after that, but I've never seen him since the end of the camp. In compensation, I checked out his Facebook profile and found a couple of videos of covers and original songs. My favourite song of his is Ngiti (although I don't exactly approve of his hairstyle in that video).

I wonder if I'm going to know him more in the future. Nevertheless, I'm sure to be a fan for a very long time.