If not for the inconvenience of unpaved eskinitas, I would have loved to still have the time to walk from where I live to that spot along the highway where I wait for the daily jeepney ride.

 

Perhaps it's just something that's nostalgic: I lived in the last street of a quite nondescript subdivision. Trisikads were not available all the time, but  there was a dog who walked me halfway through the daily route, and met me at the same spot almost everyday when I came home. There were lunch scraps for him to be had, anyway. I'd like to believe the morning routine was his way of saying thank you. I wonder when he died in the past few years.

 

Last year, I lived in a nondescript compound with a kind but stingy lady who scrimped on materials for house renovations. I, therefore, had to put up with my shoebox of a room. But the trees seemed much happier in that part of the sub-urbs, and the walk to the high way brought fragmented thoughts. It was frustrating that they were merely fragments, but looking back, they were beautiful nontheless. If there is one thing to be learned, patience must be exercised even upon the self. A year after, those fragments are now part of wholes, or at least, some semblance of a whole.

 

This year I moved to the busier part of the metropolis, a jeepney ride away from where I work -- in a relatively nondescript bohemian cafe, one not familiar to many. But this one houses memories. I live among these memories. What used to be the warm yellow of the place now feels like old piss sometimes, but it's not necessarily a bad thing. My friend lives in the next room where, sometimes, another friend stays for days to weeks for the sake of convenience. We rarely drink beer together anymore, simply because we're up to our ears in the future we so thought of or worried about when we were younger. Looking at the rear view mirror now, all is fine; only the change had made things unsettling for a time.

 

Outside, I only have to walk across the garage to get to the roadside. There's barely any time to think. New job, new house. New band even. I'm too busy to be bipolar too, and that's been a good thing as of late. The ex is forgotten. Loves are not. Two nights ago three friends I began to know well only this year barged in just in time. Nice save. Just when one's burned out. Carlo and Roy on perpetual trips to everywhere. And I'm packing my bags too. Toss a coin and see where I'm off to. The jeepneys are right in front of me. I don't have to walk.