Writing at Midnight

It is midnight
So I will write

And my 8 to 5 commitment
Is rendered a non-factor.

When the Dam Breaks

Where will you be when the dam breaks? 
Some water is seeping through the cracks
Some right over the height

No walls are tall enough
As this water will turn solid
At a moment’s notice

I watch from the bottom
Almost inevitable engulfment
Lest humans learn to fly
Or physically vanish (I try to whisk my mind away
To elsewhere)

8/9/13 – F

Today, it did not rain. That is new. The clouds were plenty enough to shield the heat, but not enough to be overbearing, to once again expose the problems of Manila’s planning and clogged waterways. 

But today, I did not make the most of this one-of-a-kind (only for now) weather. As the other days, the previous days, my eyes have been fixated on books and e-books. E-books -> a computer screen. A screen also full of grad school information (it’s still many, many miles off, but I tend to look far into the future) and windows of photo and video software. I would copy-paste that sentence into journals for other days.

But this happens to be the first! 

I am sick of thinking in marginal quantities and manipulating equations (I am an Economics major) and am burned out with editing, editing, editing. It has been 76 days since this blog has turned a year old (I highly appreciate WordPress’s informing me about it) and there has been no new content here in that span of time. This changes that; hopefully, it changes my metaphorical condition.

Though I did not leave the recesses of home, I can at least say that this day of pleasant weather has been marked with a new post.

Soul-cleansing, making room for my original creative pursuit: writing. You are my first, it is written. 

Here’s to writing. The plan is to run, again.

1/365/∞

You are with me
In summers
And monsoons past
Spanning continents, and time
When I am here, or
Away
I will take you along

You remain present
On a dot in the scrolls of time
And whole pages
And what counts in between

We take space
With steps uncertain
You, you have your own
With me
On a path well laid out
There are more, waiting to be crossed

We keep what we have to ourselves
They remain untouchable.

Hello, How are You?

You
Again
Hello.

Youth
Know nothing
We knew nothing
But you are no mistake
Among my many

Who fills your head now
Your waking moments in isolation?
Now so close
As to share the wind, the air
Every step, beat
Exchanging looks without crime

Maybe
Maybe we’re better
Now

These thoughts end now
I am happy where I am, I’d say.

15/30

The World Outside My Door

Eyes, eyes
Eyes
All of them

Black and white, full color
Our choices of seeing

I went out the door
And met eyes, eyes
Who saw in black and white
Or full color

In my home
Only colors
Vibrant, life
Ignorant life

Out the door
Eyes, they are discerning
They take life away

Those eyes, eyes
How I’d gouge them.

14/30

Sardines at 2 in the Morning

Morning is night
All necessary transpositions apply
Dawn, we are met with life
The sun is no friend to eyes, closing

There is color in darkness
Look closer
Deeper, but don’t fall into the abyss
There is room for motion

I open a can of sardines at 2 in the morning
Oil, spice, pickles
Slice halfway, deboned
I am having the time of my life.

12/30

Finding Myself a Place on Earth

Closed eyes
Forward, I
Bottles in hand, to share
I am at the end, without spill

I took the steps I’ve come to know
There, right there, the people I’ve come to know

Here
Forecasts of the sky have ceased to matter
There’s a fireplace
It’s always lit
I will stay nearby.

11/30

At the Edge of Youth

This is no game
Where victory is assured
In infinite do-overs

My weapon is the sword of youth
It refuses wielding in vicinity of true age
Of minds time-tested
Solid built by the heat of experience
It is then a blunt blade
But a nuisance

I had paraded in armor
It was no armor
I have paraded a joke

Freedom was my mount
My ticket to waste

It is a steed for the wise.

10/30

An Experience with Manual Flash

Here’s me once again with a non-poem post! (And for the first time, I’ll have a photo in a post!) This time, I’ll be sharing my experience taking photos for my college organization’s culmination event. (Aside from writing, my other passion over the past year has been photography. In fact, I have to admit that I’ve spent much more time taking photos and learning to take better photos over the past year than writing.)

Recently, for my final requirement in an English class, I wrote a paper on digital photography and how the technology has advanced since the days of film. A lot of the things people do have become more and more automated and machine-reliant over the past few decades, making everything faster, and cameras are no exception. We don’t *have* to put up with manually altering each setting. With digital SLRs, we can opt to, but a lot of the time, it’s much easier to let the camera take care of the settings. Instant results. This is a world of instant coffee and instant gratification. And without a doubt, a nice looking picture taken in an automatic camera mode is still a nice picture and it will not fail to satisfy.

I personally do not rely on fully automatic modes with my camera, as I always like to have control of a lot of factors in my output, though I do leave some settings on auto. And when I go shooting in places where I need to bring my hotshoe flash unit, I pretty much always set it to auto, and the only thing I change from there on is the angle of the flash. My pictures come out with nice light each time without much effort on my part (these are not necessarily nice pictures, mind you, just well exposed ones).

However, the lighting situation I faced during the culmination night was really tricky. It was pretty dark and was an open area. And at one point, the picture at the top of the post happened. No amount of computer editing could save THAT! The camera got confused and fired out a full power blast, and knocked my batteries out for a few seconds. I tried to change some settings and it happened again. With only one set of batteries at that time (big no no), I couldn’t risk full power flashes anymore. I had no choice but to go full manual.

I’ve used manual flash before, but that was during a photoshoot with controlled settings. Covering events is a different story altogether. I was honestly panicking internally at that point, but I had to stay composed and figure out how to power my flash at one distance and at what settings on my camera. I couldn’t just click and click and get nice light. I had to consider a lot of factors each time. I would eventually *sort of* get the hang of it after a lot of do-overs and failed attempts. (It was also pretty tough instructing people who would take my picture to stand here an set it like this and yadda yadda).) Those failed attempts started to turn into successful ones. I started to get results similar to if the automatic mode was properly working.

I had not been that satisfied in a long time.

Being my organization’s photographer for the semester, after tons of events, I started to feel a little burned out. It got to the point where I was taking pictures of the same people just in different locations, having to do little other than click and change a setting here and there. But in this instance, I was faced with an uncomfortable challenge, and it ended up as something totally refreshing.

I got to slow down. I didn’t feel like I was having to rush any good shots. I had a chance to take my time manually setting my camera up. And it’s surely much more satisfying to get good results knowing you had full control of your camera’s settings than if the camera did it for you. There was some sort of fleeting connection established with my camera during that night. I felt like I had true power over the light I was capturing. I was exerting conscious effort to get the best shots possible. To add to this, sometimes, I couldn’t even see my subjects through the viewfinder, as the venue was indeed dark. So when they turned out well lit on my LCD, that took the satisfaction to a different level. It’s as if they came to life each time.

That night, event photography felt like an art more than ever before. My camera felt like a set of tools that I could all manipulate and not a spoon-feeding assistant. And this was all because I *had* to go manual. So in the next times I cover events, will I be shooting manual then? Probably not. I prioritize getting “the shot” and depending on the event, speed will be much needed. Also, the whole set of pictures was a post-processing nightmare, having to fix so many things. Nevertheless, having lived a very fast paced life in college, it was a true breather to just slow down for a while. In a highly automated world, the charm of doing some things manually is something I’d say we all need once in a while. Slow down! We have more time to appreciate the little things then.