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Tonight I am in the office again, alone with my music and my thoughts. I am at just the right place to observe silently and without anyone noticing, all these lives that other people live, the lives I'm not living right now. The tabletop in front of me is bare; I had expected to see at least my office mates' ashtray on it. But they have gone home several hours ago, not even a whiff of cigarette smoke remains to tell me they were here.

On my browser, I see pictures of this newspaper's former writers and editors, taken from when they were vacationing in Japan. I feel something strange welling up within me--jealousy? insecurity? In any case, there those people were, smiling among torii gates and sakura trees. I've always dreamed to go to Japan. The pictures are always so beautiful.

Maybe they went drinking, my colleagues. We all live a hard life after all. Sometimes I wonder until when I could hold out my promise of not drinking.

Or my promise of working well enough to go to law school. I want to believe in a lot of things--that I can indeed pull this off, because so many others have done so before me, and they were writers for the same newspaper, students studying the same course. But who am I compared to these people? I am nothing.

It's really very hard to believe something you couldn't see. It's very hard to love something that doesn't respond to you. You'll get to the point when you wonder if you're only dreaming the grand object of your great love. Para kanino ba ako nagsusulat? Para kanino ba ako nangangarap?

Or do I just do all these for self-confirmation? Am I only attempting to measure what worth I can measure in myself by means of quantifying my level of involvement with the things around me?

Am I only aspiring for power? It hurts to think that. I don't want that. I don't want that. I don't want that.




You aren't here. I wonder where you are. I wonder how you're going to find me. I need help doing that.

Will you embrace me, and this untameable ambition? 

Come to me, soon. I need you. Whoever you are.