Midnight Drama: Part One of What Could be A Long Series of Drama

31 October 2010

It is 11:59 as I write this, the walls of my room shake as big-ass trucks pass by, dogs seem to be arguing about something, but the wind is quiet, and still I am lulled by the humming of my electric fan. After watching episode after episode of downloaded sitcoms I went down to the kitchen to make myself a pitcher of orange juice and a scooped a small bowl of peanut butter. Now I am sitting on my bed, hunched low, the only light coming from my laptop screen and I thought I should write something about love. So here I am.

There are no experts in love, the scientists can tell you about neural receptors and chemicals being secreted and bolts in your brain, and they can tell you of your beating heart, of your flushing cheeks, of your stutter as you speak, but they cannot tell you of love, not as you want to hear it. Social scientists go forth and observe your behaviors and the patterns and the similarities and differences between societies and cultures of their perception or expression of love, they give a lot of talk, but none of those are what I want to say. Even the poets and their figures of speech are not much different, they’re just fancy words, fancy phrases for something we all know, but can’t say what.

Love, love, love, we know of love, we know what it is, but we don’t have enough data about it to be able to say something about what it is that will be conclusively accepted as true. Except perhaps that it’s  perplexing.

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I want to see you. I want to hold you.

I have dreams, dreams where I wrap my arms around you and I shield you from the world. In my arms nothing can harm you, in my arms there is no reason to be scared, in my arms there is nothing but my love. I can promise you my heart, I can promise you my life, I can promise forever if only you ask.

Tell me to come to you, tell me to speak, to shout, to proclaim to the world that I love you. Let me say it, let me say what we both know.

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It is 2:19 AM, 26 hours and 20 minutes after I begun writing this piece and I am still thinking love. I have considered asking somebody more experienced than me in this field and then was where I hit another brick wall. What exactly constitutes the ‘experiencing’ of love? Does it require a mutual acceptance of a relationship before it falls into the category of ‘true’ love? I only bring that up of course because it was the main argument of this girl I knew in high school as to why what I was feeling for her cannot be in anyway ‘love’. Is an individual’s consciousness that a set of emotions and reactions to stimuli fall into a set and culturally accepted pattern constitute as ‘experiencing’ love, hence the phrase ‘falling in love’?

For several days now I’ve been immersing myself in different possible sources of information. Among them are love poems (notably, Chingbee Cruz has wonderful love poems, though again I cannot possibly know how the category ‘love poem’ was ever formulated without a clear enough definition of love), Hugh Grant movies, romantic songs (ignoring the fact that I might come off as spambot now, I would like to commend Ang Bandang Shirley for their album ‘Theme songs’), romantic comedy sitcoms, and even the holy books of different religions. Still I’ve got nothing.

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I watch my cigarette burn. Holding it between two fingers I bring it closer and closer to my face. I see the ember as it consumes another bit of white paper and turns it into gray ash. The orange burns brightly within the black of the burnt tobacco, and right then I wanted to kill the embers on my chest. Burn my skin with this cigarette, right where my heart beats. It shouts, my heart does, it is cold and weak. I shall bring it warmth. I shall bury this cigarette through my flesh and bone to pierce my heart.

Your picture is pinned on a corkboard on my wall. Too small for me to frame it, too valuable for me to keep it in my wallet, too beautiful is the face on it for me to be able to cease thinking of it. I cannot hide it, I cannot throw it away, your smile immortalized in celluloid has been marked into my brain, etched with the embers of a cigarette.

I watch my cigarette until it burns nearer and nearer my skin. I swore to myself never to let it go, no matter the pain of the heat, no matter what stinging burn, I shall hold it until it dies between my fingers. Only then shall I let it go.

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Jesus Christ, it’s now 3 AM and I’m writing vaguely about unrequited love, how much more pathetic can I be?

FML.