How do memories actually slip in,

congealing as live cells,

breathing and pulsating on their own?

Try as you might,

none of them can ever be found

no matter how meticulous you comb through

cavities of the heart where in myth

anything you can’t stash away escapes.

Incredulous thought, of course—

an organ the size of your fist can’t

possibly compress into points as invisible

as unnamed stars these heaving live cells.

What about the brain,

in whose recesses and pools colliding stars falling

in millennium bits of light, moments

as deep as the unseen edges of the universe are known

to be reflected?

Even more incredulous—this

organ the size of half a ciabatta floating on water

can’t possibly breed the universe.

What then do you suppose

happen to moments at the instant

of birth, who gives birth to them anyway,

when do they turn into memories?

Metamorphose perhaps

into phantom cells, molecules

you carry about weightless until

you coax them into being. Only then

do they dance before your eyes or rush in

to bruise your heart.   

(c) Copyright 2007 by Alegria imperial

I glimpsed your side with Jose Ma leaning toward

you in Meeting Room 1 at the 3rd floor. I had crossed

that long corridor from the casino like an Alice lost

because the area was still quite deserted. Suddenly

shy and embarrassed, a feeling that hardly grips me, I

withdrew and re-crossed my way back to the casino,

edged my way among the slot machines, and headed

straight to the elevator. Had dropped by on my way to

a brief meeting with Celia and Tina R. (not T) at Met

cafe totally ignorant of the proceedings, of course.

I dropped in at around 4:30 and took the elevator to

the 6th floor first where I read in a tarpaulin

banner by the foyer that the conference (called Tribuna?) 

was being held. Not one of the girls, naturally, could help me.

I peeked into the ballroom where a serious discussion was

on the road so much so that not one head moved even as

I grazed the crowd for yours. Told by one of the girls

in the secretariat table that the proceedings could

end soon–she glanced at a watch which I later

realized skipped an hour ahead. And so I sat around in

a cordoned corner I thought was meant for the press,

reading  a  magazine I really had no interest in.

The area, it turned out, belonged to the country’s top

 insurance company, whose marketing staff later

held a meeting. Too polite to send me away,

they charged away assessing their quite embarassing

entry into a gathering where the crowd would not be

in the least interested to get an insurance!

But the guy, who seemed tasked with sales,

assured this woman in a sheer, loose-sleeved blouse

sipping coffee beside me–who often turned her head,

smiling with a quite baffled eye at me–that what they

probably had done unwittingly, is ‘break’ into this

august event! With this shallow presentation–I stood up

and looked around for what else I could do, to bide the time–

but already feeling quite uneasy: what was I doing, prowling about

like a girl stalking a puppy love?

It was then when a rather familiar figure floated out

of the second door with four other sculpted bodies in

his trail; I wasn’t mistaken. I knew him! It’s Tony

former folk dance soloist , now known choreographer,

but recently gaining fame for his work with street

kids whom he turns into great dancers. We chatted a

bit; I learned they prepared to close today’s events.

But after five minutes, his focus strayed. We couldn’t

have carried on further than ‘how are you doing?’

because he and his consorts left that other half of

the ballroom, the holding area for the performers, for

some air and to smoke! They were dying to smoke.

It was then when I sauntered back to the secretariat

table and browsed at the program. That’s when I read

you were in a group session at the third floor. By the

time I reached the lobby where I had hoped to sit

around again and wait for you to finish at 6 pm, my

cell phone beeped a message from Celia; she was only

five minutes away from the Met. On the cab, I sent a

text message to Carlos–using the number from your

call yesterday–hoping he would get my message and

relay it to you. Perhaps, he would.

At least, I saw your form though I could have been a

hundred yards away. This could be a rather wild

calculation but which had seemed so enhanced as it was

by the gaping dimensions of the corridor. Still that

brief moment was exhilarating.

The entry then concluded with this poem:

Song

In dreams as in wakefulness,

bands of air swirl between us–

thoughts spinning in flight,

words but dust in the eye.

In dreams as in waking

I trail the wind, your thoughts

lost in longing,  your moaning

a storm tearing at my heart.

I float hidden in dreams

as when awake like a wisp

I hover but a shadow

light sweeps with but a wave.

Once, awake as in a dream,

I painted my eyes like Circe–

the wind my voice for your eyes

knowing the magic lies there.

But in the dream as in waking,

the wind but died, failing–

the song I played my heart the lyre

for you, but a hiss among shadows.

Events and personalities in this diary excerpt are fictionalized from a small notebook I picked up outside of a conference hall after a gathering of historians  I once attended. Whoever owned it wrote entries in single words and phrases. But it was easy to understand he/she or perhaps it was a she, judging by the doodles of hearts and flowers and cherubims–maybe Cupid–in some pages. There was no ID, no name. 

The poem C0pyright 2007 by Alegria Imperial) is also posted at my other blog, jornales.wordpress for  One Stop Poetry’s  One Shot Wednesday.

1.

red rose

in a fluted vase

sitting

on its petals

for no one

pretending

prettiness passes

for love

2.

the gift

in its box but

a heart

unwrapped

its beating

unfelt–

the ease

a lover leaves

at dawn

3.

notes

left unwritten

cloud

the heart

wilt

on red roses

a garden

in snow–

the hand

awaiting

spring

These are excerpts from an exchange of emails with my younger sister during a rather confused time. She has overcome it since then and found balance in her ‘inner space’. What guided her through the turmoil is not so much as my advice but the values and virtues ingrained in her, in us, by our parents.

As an adult, we hardly discern where our thought patterns or choices come from–what inner commands make us avoid or plunge into situtations that suddenly confront us like the earth right ahead of us suddenly agape. From that silent spring or ocean or whatever image you wish to use to picture where our inner workings lie, I wrote this mail for my sister. I don’t know if you can use it or you agree but I’m posting it for whoever may pick up a gem from it.

Some points I forgot to take up in my email ‘last
night’.

First, the interaction in the office—these are subtle
flirtations. If any woman succumbs to them, because as
you must you have noticed these are mostly flattery,
she is considered a conquest. It may or may not
develop into a serious relationship but as Papa used
to warn me, males will do anything to ‘get under your
skirt.’

These days, that doesn’t seem to be the only
reason; males now conquer for security especially if
they know the woman has more resources or she has
something (like that story of the Filipina immigrant
to Canada) he can use for his own selfish motives
(they’re very good at concealing it, too, because
loving gestures are mere play for them—nothing
emotional). Most of the time, these interactions are
harmless and not done in earnest. The problem comes
when subtle attraction begins and someone gives in.

Second, friendships with males—these are great
actually because males complement female nature. They
provide physical strength, security, and at times a
broader less emotional point of view. If it’s based on
a lot of compatibility, these friendships also help us
develop or blossom into our better selves. But it is
tricky to keep such friendships at an objective level
because the tension of physical or emotional
attraction usually persists and threatens to mar the
purity or sincerity of it until this is overcome.

How or when is the tension absent?

1) when there is nothing personal talked about or
shared
2) when personal space is kept in public places such
as the office, the church, grocery, etc. in other
words, nothing one-on-one to suggest intimacy
3) when what is shared is limited to what is being
talked about right there and then
4) when what is shared does not intrude personal
facts.

Third, the nature of intimacy—a great yet limiting
experience because it means total exclusivity. When a
friendship develops into an intimate relationship, all
else including family turns into an outsider. All that
you are, you have, you own, including your thoughts
must be shared otherwise the relationship fails; if it
does, it’s an experience beyond physical pain.

The Lord, as I understand it, wills us to have
relationships to be instruments of creation. It does
not always happen in the simple way He has commanded
as in bearing children. Some couples have borne other
‘children’ such as those who have served the
community, created works to open the hearts and minds
of humanity, or discovered ways to a better life.
Other couples ‘bring each other up’ or simply lead
each other to higher spirituality. But all couples
must go through the crucible of recognizing each
other’s physicality and transforming each other’s
crudeness into the fineness of spirit that the Lord
wills for all in the end.

I meant this to be merely a guide or an answer to some
of the questions you may have only implied and not
verbalized. I have always considered you more stable
and down-to-earth than I am. I trust you really are
because you have proven it this past three years. I
also know that you’re very strong willed and will
pursue something regardless to test it and make your
own conclusions. On this matter though, because it’s
uncharted for you and emotions seem new to you, I hope
you would seek guidance if not from me, from someone
you trust. Like I’ve suggested when I was there,
Hubert, it appears, could be such a friend–and of
course, the Lord who has bared His heart to you, and
the Holy Spirit who works on you invisibly.

During engagement, answers to the questions in the
former stage of the relationship will be put to test
actually. Have both of you been honest with each
other? Other issues could surface and easily dealt
with if love has taken root. If not, serious
disagreements that may cause a break-up will surface
but are better regarded as blessings in disguise.
Marriage will not be the time to thresh things out.
Life will be overwhelming.

So, there, I’ve repeated what I’ve been saying,
haven’t I? But I can’t think of it or say it any other
way. I’ve been trying to read up on and listen to
other ‘discourses’ about love but most of what I’ve
gathered simply reinforces what I already know.

Come to think of it, I believe it’s not that you have
been unrequited. I believe it’s you who couldn’t or
wouldn’t respond. Perhaps, you should really cool off
for a while, stay at a distance and reflect on what or
whom you really want. In your reflections, these
points might help:

1. If it’s another Sonia you want to replace the Sonia
you lost, you’ll forever be lost.
2. What really caused the ‘break-up’ with Sonia?
3. Did you allow her to know and treat you as a human
being as much as you wanted to know and treat her as
one, meaning, you in the most ordinary way?
4. In between silences or in the distance, did you
reassure her or took for granted that she understood
it when you were focused, tired, or simply in a down
mood?
5. Who else did you really want as much as you did
Sonia? What caused you or her to drift away?
6. In those moments when you connected to any one of
those women, what mattered most or what was the
‘connection’ about, what linked you to her?

Like Plato and the sophists who sought to explain
emotions philosophically and put some order or logic
into them, I could be guilty of well, sophistry!
Because, honestly, there’s no way we can understand
the gamut of emotions only love could wring out of our
whole being. Because the real truth is, love doesn’t
loosen its grip on us nor does it let go – not with
love fulfilled or love that has faded and died.
Somehow, when one is no longer aware or affected by
it, the ‘grip’ tightens even more excruciatingly than
the first or the second wound. I guess, what actually
defines our human condition is pain we carry invisibly
in our hearts, which if made visible might look like
an ugly patchwork of longing and loneliness. As we
grow older though, our tolerance to pain is so much
higher that it becomes easier to live through endless
days.

Love is that strange. It had nothing to do with you as
a person, especially not with your looks; her turning
away had to do with a deep need for whomever she
pursued. The sad thing about it is you’ll never know.
Perhaps, she doesn’t even know it. This need lies so
deep in the consciousness it drives us blind. Only if
we confront it — this phantom — grapple with it and
pin it down do we recognize it.

Here is how our conversations or better yet, exchange of mails started. He would write about his failure to make a young woman he once again fancies to fall in love with him. And here’s one of my answers:

Honestly, I’m now as confused as a young girl
wondering about what love really is, feeling a bit
shaky on the ‘podium’ where I’ve been standing, having
lost some of my panache so it seems. The realization
that falling in and out of love could turn out to be a
unique experience for every person has mainly caused
the erosion of my confidence. I feel that like a
charlatan, I have been rattling on and I must ask for
your forgiveness.

But I had promised you and I’m fulfilling it. As you
read, please remember that I’m expressing ideas I
distilled from my own experience and those of friends
who have confided in me. I’ll try to organize my
thoughts as neatly as I can but I might not succeed; I
guess you know by now how fluid and circular my train
of thought could be. I’ll also try to summarize main
points and present these as points to reflect on or
perhaps items like in a test. So, here goes:

Getting to know the other
Love and loving, even liking, are often confused or
interchanged in most circumstances at the start of a
relationship that what happens in courtship (for want
of a term to mean the first stage) often determines
whether or not the attraction between two people will
develop into a steady relationship or fizzle out.

Meeting ‘the one’ is an event that can either be
ordinary or breathtaking. Attraction is the usual
signal, and at times, alchemy or chemistry. The moment
of attraction is almost magical if it’s present. Or
like the headiness that comes with good wine, rather
slow but then, overwhelming. Such a moment then begins
to take over because the memory of it lingers on or
haunts you. If the following ‘elements’ keep coming
back to memory, then the ‘meeting’ was somehow fatal:

1. Physical attraction that’s mutual
2. Laughter or a feeling of lightness
3. Meeting of minds

All three may not happen instantly or during the first
meeting. But even if only one does, it’s a good point
with which to start. Points no. 2 and 3 often get you
far. The first one, while an ideal factor, is often
the hardest to deal with because it’s what blinds you
and the ‘desired one’ into plunging right ahead where
you should have been careful.

Beyond the first meeting
To like another person means to want to be with her if
possible through all hours. It means wanting to share
all your hours with her in much the same way as you
want her to share hers with you. This second stage
still belongs to ‘getting to know each other’ or
courtship in the ‘old world.’ No commitment is being
made here but exclusivity is becoming more and more
implied as you both want to spend more time together.

While you are compelled to spend such time alone with
the ‘desired one’ all the time, it’s wiser to diffuse
time together by including friends or peers. While you
are compelled to spend such time, too, in exclusive,
romantic places, it’s wiser to share time you spend in
an ordinary way such as simply sipping coffee at
Starbucks, browsing at Power Books, strolling by the
bay or jumping into one of those trips to Corregidor.
(My examples, of course, are arbitrary not really
knowing how you spend your time off work except
playing tennis, visiting ruins of old churches,
browsing in art galleries, reading, dancing (?), aside
from lunching out or dining with friends, or I’m just
guessing.)

But anyway, what you should achieve in this stage of
the ‘friendship’ is getting to know the ‘desired one’
as a person as much as revealing yourself as a person
to her. Details matter a lot during this stage. You
get to learn more about each other and what you learn
may or not matter. Your answer to these questions will
determine whether or not you want to pursue the
relationship and bring it to a higher level:

1. do you have the same tastes?
2. if not, do you agree on some if not most points?
3. is it easy for both of you to go along with the
other?
4. is laughter easy?
5. does caring for the other and being concerned about
what the other feels the quality that smoothens some
disagreements, in case these come up?
6. do you care about everything she’s made of such as
her family, origins, past, etc., in other words her
unique story? Does she about yours? Are you genuinely
interested in her as a person? Is she about you?

If the answers to these questions become more and more
of a ‘yes!’ a commitment tends to become more or less
implied. The moment for ‘pledging’ ripens.

Note of caution: Be careful in handling ‘signs of
passion’ whether in showing it or receiving it.
Exclusivity breeds passion and all its fangs such as
jealousy, possessiveness, and insecurity. Passion
often expresses itself as turmoil of fear, rage,
expectancy and disappointment. It’s not a healthy
sign. Passion will consume both of you.

 Next post: engagement

I had written your name,

thinking

about a poem. Then,

I knew you, seeing

flowers tumble

in my head, weeds

tangled underneath,

birds on twigs, altering

the lines of songs. I crept

away, my poem

in my breast, the poem 

about your name turned

into a poem about

how a poem does not always

write itself the way

it begins, the way

it is born.

This poem was written for the friend mentioned in the earlier post–it could have been written by him because it’s exactly what happens to him and exactly how he feels every time it happens. He has been in agony for lost loves or ’wrong’ loves for a long long time. He and I had plunged into his inner spaces for the past eight years, going and back forth to what went wrong or why. He finds clarity sometimes but then black clouds begin to thicken in his vacant skies again.

If lovers realize on their wedding day the
actual weight of their marriage vows, they’d turn
around and gallop away. But on their wedding day,
lovers are often hardly aware of what’s going on. Most
couples take a few years to wake up, others as early
as the second year. No matter, the ‘polishing’ in the
crucible goes on ’till death do us part’. If ‘true
love’ takes over’, heaven descends to earth; if it
doesn’t, hell ascends.

Beauty objectively magnetizes the ‘eye’. In nature, in
art, in objects we see — indeed, how much more
physical beauty. Yet, like I’ve been telling you,
quoting from ‘The Little Prince’ , ‘it’s only with the
heart that one can rightly see; what’s essential is
invisible to the eye.’ Even in art, this is true,
right?

Think then about the heart’s secret dreams,
wants, desires — these are what make us focus on that
one person who could be extremely attractive or
someone whom no one perhaps would think beautiful. It could
happen in an instant or in a few more meetings. The
‘chemistry’ or the mutuality could also spark both and
strike with the ‘pain’ of romantic longing in an
instant. But it may or may not last.

Romance is not all of love — it’s what gives love the
moonlight glow or shimmer in the sky. It’s the first
breath of spring, the soft vapor of twilight, the
purple brush of dawn on still sleepy eyes, the pink
death of day at sunset, the soft quiver of a first
kiss  — I could go on and on. But none of the above
is love. Love is all other things like not getting
home on time because of traffic and getting a kiss
from the beloved instead of a bark or a sulk, or a
baby suddenly breaking out with a rash just when you
have dressed up for a romantic dinner, or late at
night when you’re supposed to snuggle in bed, the wife
of husband suddenly feels bad and you have to rush to
ER, etc….

Intimacies actually strengthen love. They shouldn’t
start it though. It should happen naturally when love
asks for it, when tenderness draws an aching to be one
in its deepest most complete, to reach and unite to
the core of one’s being. It’s then when you feel the
universe has  contracted and you have it in your
palms, your heart, your mind — that’s the beloved and
you as one. The power is quite unimaginable!

‘Love is not a feeling; it is a state of being.’
True it begins with a spark, an attraction and it
should grow into passion and desire (LFD?) but soon,
it must cool down into a warm glow like an ember
throwing off light, sustaining everything else in you
and the loved one, all of you and all of her– your
lives, your worlds – including but only at times
passion and desire. That’s why it demands time or
having to know the desired one in every way. If
everything else revealed or unraveled lifts you or the
other up, then love has been ignited, and it must soon
begin to blossom into a flame. But if even the
slightest gesture drags you down, it should be a
warning of danger.

A note about pain – if it comes with longing to be one
with the beloved yet barred or unreciprocated
(un-corresponded), it is mere romance and stays as
such, unless of course that which deters fulfillment
is overcome or resolved. The nature of love is not
pain but joy, bliss, and peace, of course. Like most
journeys, which love is — a journey to ultimate
fulfillment — bumps during the ride should only be
there as challenges that will carry the relationship
to a higher level. But if pain is constant, then I
believe it is mere obsession that stifles or even
strangles love to death.

Because the nature of love is joy and bliss, it finds
natural ground in friendship. Even in deep attraction,
the meeting should be of cordiality  — of closeness
yet of respect, of tenderness yet of delicateness.
But love in order to survive has to rise into sublime
friendship,.

You see desire and passion or that pain that grips you
in the guts would not help lovers cope with life’s
realities. Early on in engagement or even in
courtship, signs of a breakdown could rear any one of
passion’s ugly guises. It could explode as jealousy,
possessiveness, and neediness. Only a relationship
that understanding, caring, and selflessness has
deepened could overcome the destructive nature of
passion.

Love then is nothing less than how St. Paul has
described it, EVERYWORD of it. Love is losing one’s
self to the other, merging two halves into one. It
does appear like a struggle to the summit but if
shared in loving oneness, it ‘s all sweetness.

(Excerpts from letters exchanged between a friend, who is in perpetual agony about lost loves, and me).

Vague ideas about it have always hovered in people’s minds. But a search for the real Valentine goes back to a pre-Christian practice, which was later layered over by some genuine act of “sweetness and thoughtfulness” from a “holy man”. The rite honors the Roman goddess Februato Juno in a “ lewd superstitious custom of boys drawing the names of girls on the fifteenth of this month.” As in most manner of conversion to Christianity, pastors substituted the honored goddess with “the name of a saint in billets given on this day,” and thus, St. Valentine.

Who is St. Valentine? The few lines written about him have spawned a legend that in fact, there are three St. Valentine.  Closer look reveals St. Valentine as not three but just one, a “temple priest jailed for defiance during the reign of the Roman emperor, Claudius, the Goth (Claudius II)” around mid-250 A.D. or the early centuries of Christianity. Valentinus was caught “marrying Christian couples and aiding Christians who were being persecuted.” While in prison, Valentinus is said to have tried to convert Claudius, who took a liking for him.  Such attempt proved fatal for the priest whom Claudius ordered beheaded at the Flaminian Gate in 269.

A clue as to why the emperor almost had a change of heart for Valentinus: the priest cured his jailer’s daughter of her blindness. A link if not quite romantic but “sweet” to today’s “love-crazed” tradition was Valentine’s having left a note for this girl where he scribbled, “From your Valentine.”

Did Valentinus ever exist? Yes, he did. Archeologists have unearthed his remains in a Roman catacomb although he was supposed to have been buried on Flaminian Way shortly after his beheading at the gate. It took another 200 years before he was canonized saint by Pope Gelasius in 496 AD and marked February 14th as his feast in honor of his martyrdom.

St. Valentine wears red, the color of blood to represent martyrdom. In his portraits, roses and birds surround him. In Christian tradition, he intercedes or is the patron saint of engaged couples (for a happy marriage), the young (and confused), those with epilepsy, or those plagued by fainting spells, bee keepers, and travelers.

 For the shy and the lazy, the feast of St. Valentine’s should make a great excuse to declare love just this once a year.

My two worlds on opposite sides of the hemisphere—this often turn up during chats with friends and even acquaintances when they learn that I write.   

When back home in Manila, curiosity about how I trudge through a snow storm brings on the urging: how I insulate myself or do I just cocoon under piles of wool in front of a fire place? Beyond imagining, that’s winter to folks who dwell under endless summer skies.

I once described how spring bursts in red camellias for one, the likes I’ve never seen that I thought was a rose. But a friend gaped at me through space, searching for a camellia. Fluid as silk, softer than an angel’s whisper so much so that a little girl at church couldn’t but be compelled to press the blossom on her cheek like it were a kiss that stayed; I filled in that space where my friend had slipped in.

I float on winged-feet, I once wrote about walking under canopies of cherry blossoms once at the Mall in Washington, Riverside in Baltimore, the Brooklyn Gardens in NY, on Union Square in Manhattan, at Burrard and Osler streets in Vancouver where I now live. But what could I compare the blossoms, shaped like bulbous clouds that the wind couldn’t move? I hinted what to me came closest to the feeling—summers when the kakawati, an indigenous tree that rose with upturned palms, spread-out fingers high up as if to stake a patch of sky in clumps of blooms part pink part lavender but in whole fragile as dawn that stayed. I reminded my friend of campus festivals where coeds used branches in full kakawati bloom in a dance where each sway balance, each sweep and swing of arms formed arcs and rings of such spring dream. My friend’s blank questioning turned into a spark of words asking for more of my imaging.

Light as it must be the first day of creation this too had struck me in the Redwoods, I began an erstwhile column I had been urged to write for a local daily. But still, it is hail that once rattled our class in fiction writing to look away from the board mapping words that recreate life that kin and friends read and recalled in my mail.

In writing sessions I’ve attended in New York, my classmates at first treated my exercises as rather suspect. A teacher once dismissed a biographical flash fiction I submitted as too gothic. But another coaxed me to lay on layers of my culture in my stories after I wrote an episode on cooking chicken from its wriggling, croaking, blinking live though tied up as if manacled to the throat-slitting, the boiling and plucking of feathers, the chopping of its parts and the aromatic broth served. Yet another focused on how I strung words to form images—how come I write like a Latin American?

My very Spanish name here in Vancouver seems like a spotlight, which draws questions people I meet beg for answers.  While I’d rather describe morning haze streaked with purple at dawn, I’m weaving words as history. But there, or here, at least, my story begins. 

The ultimate question that is often left un-asked then is not about what I write or how I write it but who are you? Who am I?