It was simple to meet you, simple to take your eyes
into mine, saying: these are eyes I have known
from the first...It was simple to touch you
against the hacked background, the grain of what we
had been, the choices, years...It was even simple
to take each other's lives in our hands, as bodies...


Origins and History of Consciousness
Adrienne Rich


*Choo, my adorable little darling. (>>More pictures in the gallery)

I talked about how life should be, how the city can benefit from its youth.
I talked about poverty and its many faces,
anarchy that will soon come if this will continue,
the city's left and right, equally crazy over what they all believe in.



We justify our silence by convincing ourselves that like them, we dream too.
But we are selfish. You sing, I do poetry, and we meet in this island to just dream.
Those are our vices. Thinking about it now, I realize I have one other vice: I love,
and rabidly so. I watch myself slowly sink in the days since you passed,
my face red, always from heavy drinking from the night before.
Memory drowns us badly, but there are things that keep me warm always.
The air, my city, our memories. I am fated to live this.




::I've done several projects in the past with shiela, but after the last one, I didn't see her for a long time. She lives in bacolod city, 3 hours by bus from here. A few weeks ago she visited Cebu and txted to tell me she had some time, so we hooked up and decided to do some shots of her. Pardon to those who are expecting some things else. These ones are kinda tame and cuty cuty because we needed them to be so.

We were softly humming while you paddled, the island sun around us and behind us. Beneath us the soft, gentle dance of the waves that carry us. Whatever their motivation is for doing so, I didn't care. For some reason I couldn't remember you were laughing. You were murmuring something about the politics of relationships, about women and how they are, how special they are--I was listening. at the back of my mind I hated you. I wanted to be the only one. Woman or whatever, but only one.

This drunkenness began in some other tavern.
When I get back around to that place,
I'll be completely sober. Meanwhile,
I'm like a bird from another continent, sitting in this aviary.
The day is coming when I fly off,
but who is it now in my ear who hears my voice?
Who says words with my mouth?




Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?
I cannot stop asking.
If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home.

by Rumi, "Whoever brought me here, will have to take me home"



::the woman above is amor, one of the models I worked with in the early days. Some people call her rose, and maybe for good reason.