SLUM STEAL
So I wake up this morning, in the dark of the night, and my heart is racing like it's aboiut to burst. I've just escaped from this awful dream where I am in a slum area that is adjacent to the apartment building a group of us are stauying in...and I realize that my celphone has just been stolen and I know it's been done by one of the slum people.

I approach a group of the slum people, who start to behave like an L.A. gang and crowd around me as if I mean them harm. I ask about the celphone and ask them to return all the missing parts. (What's left kasi is the body, the casing... but no electronics, not even the SIM card.) And their response? A guy comes out with a gun and points it at me, asking if I am accusing them of stealing my phone. Of course, I back off, and say no, no, no. And my heart speeds up dramatically. As if, I''d been running the marathon. I try to get out of the situation, but cannot remember if I ever do. Because just then I wake up.

December 18, 2001 : Tuesday : 8:31 am

IN MY LOLA's HOUSE, GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL
Had a vivid dream, the first I've remembered in a long long time: Bulusan. Back in the old place, looking like it's new and used. I am running around to get ready for a school day. When the front doorbell starts ringing and I go to answer it, only to find some familiar people outside the gate: It's Alan tecson's car: except the hood is open and they're trying to fix the engine. Offf to one side, seated on a stool is his mom who is happy that her article came out in the dailies. And was quite pleased to also see my name in the same issue of that first article of hers. My name was there in relation to a Bukas Palad press release of some sort, ort maybe a review of some musical piece. Meanwhile I have a bunch of CDs and notebooks I'm supposed to show Alan, but he's too busy trying to fix his car. Then it finally runs and they all rush off to get back into the car. Even my cousin, Michael Soncuya is with them. He's dressed in a neat, shiny black polo shirt and black pants, and even though I know he's about 10 years younger than we are, he already looks balding and is more closely resembling his father than he ever has before.

In shock that na-dedma ako, I go back into the house and start to look for something to eat. I search the ref. There are 2 other maids here today, they are new ones. And one is brushing her teeth in the opposite sink when I am almost spat on. I am washing my hands kasi opposite her. Anyway. I head to the ref and find chocolates, but I want none of them. Then I spy some really juicy looking pomelo. SUHA! I grab a few and then decide on some more, and then am in a panic because I think I hear the horn of my school bus honking outside.

I scream at Myrna, our maid, who seems strangely unaffected or lethargic and ask her a few times where the sandwich bags are... but she neither responds nor shows me. I have to ask really loud before she opens a side container that houses the bags, and I stuff the suha into them, except by now, it looks like I'm holding cobs of corn rather than slices of pomelo. I go to the living room to look for my bag and am sorta glad I fixed my bag really well the night before, unlike many other times in my past… and stuff the corn cobs in, along with my books. It's a new-looking backpack and I am glad of it. My parents are also in the living room and are watching some sort of spy film with sexy scenery. The honking from the schoool bus gets louder and louder. And I wake up hearing some train's horn going off in the distance.

December 20, 2001

NIGHTMARE SKIES AND BOARD MEETINGS ON THE RAPIST'S BED
In the middle of our room in the office, is a meeting. Althought the room also looks like a nightmare sequence from Hellraiser and combines with this image of a bed which a serial rapist has slept in and which reeks of semen and other bodily fluids… and so the mattress is curled up in one corner so that Agnes and I can actually get on the bed wiothout feeling any sticky goo on our skin.
___ And then we are talking…. And I see waves. Mile high tidal waves coming down on farm lands. And dark skies. It is the deluge of Noah. And we are ark-less. And the sky looks like a Cranberries video with the cowboy ghosts. And then it tuirns back into the Dslash office and we are having a meeting with MGK about of all things, Aurora Wireless and how they want hosting that's not in the Philippines because they need sheer dependability and they cant rely on any local servers… even if it is hosted elsewhere, they don't want any association with the Philippines apparently, And Billy and I are there as well as some other people. And then I remember the cottage of the serial rapist and the way the wooden boards have rotted through and the entire vista outside the window is fields of some grain like corn maybe. And then the sky cracks into dark shapes. And hues. And streaks of black on the violet and brackish heavens.
___We are hiding in the cottage. But maybe something evil is lurking there with us.

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