Beautiful Riddles

Vol de la mort.

Flight of death.

A beautiful vision, is it not? To have the ability to evade death's playful arms paints a picture of utter purity. Flight...suggests freedom and brings to mind vivid pictures of immense meadows and endless blue skies. But we know better. I know better.

Voldemort is the picture of pure evil, of unadulterated sin that could not possibly exist in a human. Thirst for power, immortality and dominance. Greed. Utterly human. Well, Voldemort was human. He was human when he was still Tom Marvolo Riddle.

He's brilliant. Absolutely so. And beautiful, I must not forget that. A perfect mind in a perfect shell. Raven locks, alabaster-pale skin and unfathomable, cunning eyes that shone with pure artifice and ambition. A sculpted face hid the snake rearing just below the surface, and slender hands concealed spidery appendages. Such a perfect mask.

He had armies at his disposal before he even became Lord Voldemort. He had powerful families to command before he became a god.

Fear. They say that the icy, all-consuming hands of Fear would choke me, bleed me dry, once his blood eyes met mine. They say that I would feel the magic crackling in the air around him, that I would be on my knees without me knowing, that I would be kneeling before a mortal god.

I never felt fear. And I prostrated myself before him, as a Death Eater would, before he even became the serpentine deity. The ability to inspire love had never been one of his strongest points. No. That exquisite monster never knew love, and so he never gave it and believed in it. He had been denied the love of a mother and of friends. He never had the pure love of another soul. He condemns love. Yet we loved him- I loved him, like a child would love his mother, a follower to leader, lover to lover.

Tom Marvolo Riddle could have had the world to himself. He had us, he had me, at his fingertips. All he had to do was reach out, and grasp. But he suddenly walked down a path where no others dared to venture before, and sought immortality. His name could have been immortal, but he also wanted his form to persevere. And so he delved deep, much deeper than anyone has dared before, into the Dark Arts.

Commoners could not understand what became of him. They shirked from his snake-like visage, they feared his brimming power, they wondered at the sick perfection of it all. When commoners fail to understand, they choose to oppose. And that's what they did.

He thrived from the hate. He grew from the fear. Greedily, he drank and drank the viscous ambrosia that seemd to flow from the masses in endless rivulets. He would have not grown more formidable from any other substance. Not the Elixir of Life. Not unicorn blood. Not vampire blood. And not Harry Potter's blood.

When he became Lord Voldemort, he was still beautiful. Of course he was still brilliant. What changed was that his human nature, which was so entrenched in unspeakable evil, became the nature of a god, albeit an imperfect one.

Whoever said that gods should be perfect?

***

Mon ami, c'est pour toi.

I once saw an awkward boy who loved his books as much, or probably more so, as I loved mine. That was not enough for me, and so I did not befriend him. He was quiet, and I did not know much.

He loved machines. That was what I knew next. Nothing really significant. An awkward boy who loved books and computers. That was all. That was all.

I didn't know better.

I didn't know that he was a man, not a boy, in the more profound sense of the word. Yet his masculinity is different and far more alluring than that of commonplace egos and unwanted machismo. His strength lies in his enduring soul, in his precious ability to withstand all his pains and immortalize his rare joys. He does not feel the need to verbalize afflictions, and instead bears it alone to nurture his immense strength. His hands, rough from countless days of perfecting a warlike art, are the most striking of all. Pens are blessed when he uses them to weave words into splendor, words that rise from the superficial papyrus to form corporeality, words so vivid and compelling that they take a tangible form.

He is more than a man who loved his computers and his books. I know this now.

They could not see you. Commoners, the lot of them. Sadly, I was one of them, too, before I ever saw beyond the books, the computers, the strangeness. And, as pointless as this may be, I am sorry. I was a kid. That alone probably speaks for the blunder.

Flight. Go on, Loki, the Skywalker. Take to the air and shed your earthly form.

Ascend to the skies, and be. Be.

Starbucks: L'endroit de la pretentieux

Hindi ako regular sa Starbucks. Hindi ko rin yun second home. At lalong hindi kape at latte ang tubig ko. Mabibilang ko lang sa dalawang kamay ang mga pagkakataong tumambay ako dun. Kadalasan, mga barkada ang kasama ko, pero minsan nililibre din ako nila Kuya Ram at Ate Apol. (Tsk, when are they gonna get hitched?) Sa mga pagkakataong tumatambay ako dun eh talaga namang nakakaloka ang aking mga experience

Nangyari ito one week prior. Nilibre ako nila Ate Apol habang nasa grocery sila Nanay at Rjay. Eh di siyempre tatambay kami dun sa loob habang tinutungga-tungga ang pagkamahal-mahal na inumin (kapitalista!joke.) (strawberries and cream frappe ang pinili ko). So, with nothing else to do, I indulged in one of my favorite wala-akong-magawa-activities. People-watching.

Siyempre, pasimple akesh sa pagpipeople-watching (anu daw!?), baka kasi isipin ng mga tao ay isa akong psychotic freak/stalker/moron. Sa table na katabi namin ay may isang grupo ng mga kababaihan na parang mga kolehiyala, pero hindi sila naka-uniform. Sigurado akong hindi sila taga-UP, kasi iba ang vibes nila. One thing I'm sure of is that they're high-class peeps. Kung paano ko na-draw ang conclusion na iyon ay hindi ko rin alam. Anyways, lakas ng tawanan ng mga girlash. Parang sila lang ang tao sa loob ng coffee shop. At dinig na dinig pa ang mga tsismisan nila. Dyosko! Kaloka.

Pero ayos lang yon. At least, they're not pretentious. Get real, ika nga. Mas ayos na iyon kesa dito sa next person na sumagi sa aking paningin.

Honestly, maganda naman talaga ang babaeng ito. She's got the complete, physical package that most guys would fall for (id est, hair, face, body, clothes). She was not worth observing, actually, but she did this little thing that made my eyebrows rise beyond my hair line.

To girls out there, I'm sure you know this. Most girls have done this to other people who have, in their opinion, questionable fashion sense/I.Q./etc. HECK. All girls have done this sometime in their lives. Admit it. Anyways, this woman, upon entering Starbucks, made a beeline for the counter. Since our table was located directly beside the counter, I was in her line of vision. Upon seeing me, she gave me a once-over: starting from my hair down to my flats. She had this nasty, little smirk on her face, and as she passed me, she flipped her long, shampoo-commercial-worthy hair and held her chin high.

Papalampasin ko na sana 'to kung hindi lang niya inulit. Susmariajosepidal! Inulit pa niya! She went back to the counter to get her drink, and repeated the bitchy process all over again. I wanted to do something, like, stretch my leg out and trip her, or splash her java-chip all over her preppy clothes, but I don't want to sink to her level. (Haha. How terribly cliche.)

Marami pang phonies dun. Some are, literally, fakes. Mga fake na babae, id est, gay men. Don't get me wrong. I have nothing against homosexuals. In fact, I love them and their spontaneity! They are actually being real when they flaunt their gayness. It's when they become shiny, hard and pretentious plastics that they annoy me.

It was probably more than a couple of years ago that the Starbucks fad literally hit the country. If you want to get technical, it was approximately a decade ago when the country's first Starbucks Coffee retail location opened in Makati, Manila's leading financial district, on December 4, 1997. But I'm talking about how it became a fad, especially among the youth. (I define youth as individuals within the age range of 15-24, in accordance with the United Nations General Assembly)

Aminin na natin. The allure of Starbucks lies predominantly on its capacity to boost one's social status. Once you're seen hanging out in Starbucks, you're automatically regarded as rich and part of the high-society. Psh. Katarantaduhan. Your friends would not let themselves be left out of the loop, and would start hanging out at S-bucks as well. This process works like a water ripple, and would just get bigger and bigger until all "contaminate-able" parties are affected.

But let me give Starbucks some credit. I'm no expert on coffee, but they make their drinks with a distinct taste and smoothness that probably attracted the sensible individuals. Not to mention the fact that the ambience is conducive to getting our creative juices flowing. Er...well...this was before sosyaleras, sosyaleros and the conio race invaded the formerly laid-back atmosphere of Starbucks and polluted the air with their foolish chatter that's primarily composed of phrases that they ripped off from Kris Aquino.

Again, I have nothing against high-society peeps. In fact, one of my circles of friends is composed mainly of rich kids from UP (how anomalous is that? Rich kids from UP?!). What annoys me is the sort of people who are not really conio but they still force themselves to act in that way, and they buy fake Louis Vuittons and Havaianas (id est, Havana) just to fit in and they blow their allowance (their parents' hard-earned money) just to buy ridiculously-expensive coffee. And to top it all off, they try so goddamn hard to speak a la conio english, never mind the fact that they sound like complete morons.

Eto sample:

"Like, how kainis is that? I mean, like, they're not even sosyal like us! Like, they're poor, di ba?"

"I know, right?"

Haha. Hilarious. And pathetic, at the same time.

One of Countless Ramblings

"Forgive, O Lord, my little joke on Thee and I'll forgive Thy great big one on me." - Robert Frost. Funny, funny man.

I'm at a standstill. I find myself in an irredeemable situation where I lose on both choices. I find myself at crossroads where each one leads to rocky cliffs that would lead to certain death. The proverbial yellow brick-road crumbles into a dirt path where nothing is certain, and everything is a myriad of abstracts and non-existence. I want to cry out to the skies, but then I remember that I have no right. No right, no right- a fiend cast from the lofty realms.

But then again, on the plane in between, are beings higher than those above, and deeper than those below. I find myself among them, in the company of immortals who chose the void, of creatures who thrive in non-belief, of men who are their own gods. It was beautiful, so impure, that I found myself drawn to the dark allure.

I wake. It was not a mere dream.

And so the week-long hiatus becomes longer than a week.