Conversations With Myself

1.

I can't write good fiction.

You don't say.

I have weak imagination. I can only write about what I have gone through and known and felt. Sure, I can exaggerate, understate, embellish, take liberties. But I need a solid floor of truth -- no matter how thin or ramshackle -- to lovingly polish, mess around with, stamp my foot on.

The next thing you'll say is you're a poor liar, too.

I don't have a good liar's imagination, creativity, and diligence. I am too lazy to try to remember lies or note them down. And I hate being caught up in the maze of one lie after another. I'm not saying I don't lie.

For a while, you haven't written. Write something, anything.

You don't when you are empty. When there's no kindling in the head. No fire in the belly. When you're dry in the heart, and elsewhere.

Some people hate to be angry or afraid or lonely. But the saddest thing to feel is nothing.

It is sad not being able to write.

Come on lighten up. You're too old to take yourself seriously.


2.

It's funny how others think old people do not feel as they do. Or are not entitled.

People say, shaking their head:

Really, now -- you STILL sleep eight hours a day? Love chocolates? Swoon over Piolo? Go kilig over someone guapo? Smile at yourself in the mirror? March at EDSA?

And, oh wow, you STILL play games online? YM-chat? Blog? Giggle? Sulk? Dream dreams? Take yourself seriously?

As though one is transformed by the wand of old age into a eunuch -- calcified, barely moving, bereft of dreams and appetites. Or at least someone who doesn't do much beyond read newspapers, watch television, dote on grandkids, complain of aching joints, and go nostalgic over lost youth.

Have I joined the ranks of the disenfranchised ... or will soon do?

I need to have a fall back for that "someday soon" when I would be shunted from the mainstream to the edges of life. Or, God, let me just drop out from it.


3.

Before I forget, I can STILL skip-hop ...

And can still write feeling poems too:


I have forgotten the fire
The fire that spreads like a blanket
And takes the nip out
Of a rainy night.

I have forgotten the spark
That spangles the eyes that glimpse it
And scalds the hand
That reaches out to touch it.

Yonder smolders a bonfire of dreams
Whoa, heart,don't go.
Heart, heart
Oh ...





(My 100th post, celebrated with all the angst I am capable of.)