IN Lola’s Dress

Guerilla with anchor buttons, black belt, black stilettos, pollo rosso, and Sensibility Has To Be Translated Onto A Text

I was late for a minute or so---allowances for a first Monday--- and sent off by the eldest sister for a mother, like a child woken and grumbling about still wanting to sleep and, “Can I not go to work?” There was that laugh and hug for a goodbye.

Before that was a dream of Jones falling in love--- that moment when I bit my nails, upset while he was hugging me. Bad enough as it is, he said, and that reluctance, that resistance to being in love had given up, given in.

Then there was that dream of that Indie Star who looked like the prince in Princess Hours, a combination of the faces of Dalao Tzu and Weirdy Ong. He was named Philip Sy Hoffman and he was just like that prince, said I was “Fab!” All cool and Selena was mad at my getting tangled again. Phillip said that he’ll wait--- as if and he had that whole tempting time--- even if I were sitting beside the right man.

And I woke, reaching for the right man’s hand who was sleeping beside me and grinding his teeth more in the past months while asleep, and then woke again alone then it was off to my own grind.

It is noon and I almost freeze inside, my brain slowing and needing shawls and warmer coats. I feel like I am only waking now from hypothermia of the brain--- this droning from 500 estimated slides to be re-mastered.

“If you don’t mind me asking---” an older Rose asks as I fill out forms she brought, “--- how old are you?”

“30,” I answer.

“You don’t look it. We thought you were only 26.”

I laugh, “So they say.”

Time stopped at 26 and now it resumes ticking.

Five hours later in an icicle cubicle, I listen to Miles Davis--- All Blues--- feeling sad over a star who had simply stopped in bed, tired, no reason to get out and off it---- now----Blues: A star will not graduate but graduate into that self-proclaimed diploma of failure. Sometimes we have no need of the world’s cruelty for we are more cruel to ourselves. Sometimes we just get tired and we stop and we don’t move again.

An hour later: the only way absurdity will make sense is if you write gibberish. The day ends, the sunset drives all those feet from tall boxes to that door---this door--- to try to regain their humanity from being rats droning into zombies. Strangely, I feel no contempt. The first five days will pass and so will the seven, then it will be thirty, and then it will be six months.

I look at these uniforms--- these faces seem to look the same. I feel displaced---little by little---and to drown out the droning, Vivaldi. And still I hear the wheels of wheeled shopping carts, the cramps of these gadgets. Now I watch others standing on lines and waiting with plugs of their own night Vivaldi--- and I remember how I read last night the pain of being an older woman, a younger man, and a younger woman all gripped by love---this need of their bodies. Even those famous become faceless in this crush… Suddenly there’s space and I become dizzy.

Three hours later, I feel old and sleepy like the retiring old--- I listen to Johnnoy who calls me Madi play the guitar and sing only for me downstairs--- Ang sakit ng kanta ‘no? Ramdam mo dito--- and holds his heart while I hold mine, nodding, saying to him, “I only really began listening to folk seven years ago. James Taylor. And after, one of my friends, Carljoe, used to take me to My Big Brother’s Moustache.” Old folks’ songs to most here young upstairs, just now graduating to life, and tonight is one of their last nights of being young in eyes.

How far I’ve come--- the right man now drinks a Red and I try to limit myself to two Light frozen, now tepid: sleeping draft. And I---I float--- “Six,” the right man says, “There are six laptops in this room.” No rest from cramps of these gadgets.

I do not say, “I really hate your job.”

I say, “It’s good you decided to leave.”