One of the ephemeral challenges was to go out and be with people. It was rendered embracing a mindset to be “crazier” enough. It’s one of those transitory effects upon finishing Veronika Decides to Die. Because I recognized that fault, the way I lived my days in the recesses of social scenes. When I enumerated things I deemed uncomfortable, going out and smile at strangers particularly tops the list. It’s almost automatic, and carries the most colorful experience when I try to reminisce it at this point of my life. I stayed later than late doing random things (sleep is for the weak), and remembered wandering to different destinations exploiting the money I saved for two years. I visited first-met relatives, slept at the most cheapest inns and lost a lot of weight. I also remembered packing five 36s film since it’s a hiatus from digital medium- it happened April and May of 2009, but the travel, weight loss and film “photography” is a different topic. Those challenges pale with my going-out-and-smling-at-strangers. I remembered sitting for hours in the park observing how life unfolds with random passerbys. Once I sat next to an old folk reading the dailies and asked him what he missed in this park 20 years from today. I remembered the puzzled expression in his face, and I also sensed that mine went wry. Fighting the urge to stand and go, I rephrased the question about what is this park like before. It’s like time warped, the way his face brightened and how he described the place in vivid imagery, how trees in colorful foliage, and how you can wound a small bridge and feed the fish with popcorn. And the birds that perched in the concrete benches so close to parkgoers and how children used to play with them. I fee like I was taken back to a beautiful past. And how comforting given that what is left are few trees and a collective of jagged landscape. I remembered standing at the end of the lane and smiling at  pedestrians with their tired faces from a long day’s work. And the tired they look, the more I sensed them anticipating for home to rest their worn bodies, the less chances they return a smile, and the more chances I’ll annoy them and get beat to death in the process. It’s as stupid, and uneasy walking naked in public. Some returned the the positive greeting and most countered it with sheer puzzlement. I remembered using the entire roll photographing a beggar counting his money in one of the travels and marveled that in a day or two from that time I’ll have to count mine the same way and worry how to survive. As those days grow distant, I hold on to memories of the strangers I met, strangers who just need to see someone smiling from the sea of sad and tired faces in this fast-paced world. The memories still linger, and it triggers a certain euphoria thinking that once upon a time, I was this crazy stupid someone who smiles at the world and eases a certain negativity that pervades it.

didacticnonscience asked: Visited your page to read the recent entries. Was quite surprised about the "janitor" remark. I don't normally say this but I think you sir, are dashing in a classy sort of way.

(Permission to publish)

Haha. He’s entitled to that “remark”. It’s okays, this life an’it happens sometimes. Thank you anyway. And… dashing? as in like those knights in shining armours and their unprecedented chivalry? Haha, I like to imagine that’s what you mean. Kidding. Anyway, thank you. How I wish I saw you while I’m in Cebu.