Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,300 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 38 trips to carry that many people.

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My family and I have this vacation home in Tagaytay and it’s a wormhole for quaint little places like Sonya’s Garden. The last time I’d been there, I was still a teenager. It was so small and unknown that the owner had the time to give us a tour of the whole place. Back then, you could go around the entire area within 30 minutes. Now, it’s a huge-ass place made for special events, more specifically, weddings. ANYWAY, not the point.

They’ve got a really good “buffet/set meal” for visitors. It’s vegetarian. For the most part, the ingredients come straight from her garden (okay. Now, I’m not too sure. Since the place’s expansion, I can’t see how they never run out) and are served in parts: salad, bread, pasta, dessert. Once you start a course, you can ask for as many refills of dips and add-ons as you wish. However, once you’re done with a said course, there’s no going back. Mum had a ball with the salad so it took an hour before we could move on to the pasta. By that time, we were stuffed.

It’s carbo-loading heaven, really.

Other than the fo0d-coma worthy servings, the place isn’t too bad either. My pictures don’t do it justice (maybe because I really just took pictures of the food. Looked so damn good). There’s a bakery, different dining areas, a spa, and a bed and breakfast now. Also, there’s a stall outside that sells pre-owned designer bags. My heart went: “WHAT THE HELL?”

Drool now.

The events of that Saturday passed by quickly. Nothing remarkable other than the way the sunlight pushed its way through the car’s tinted windows. It was a battered thing. A medium sized machine of faded green. Its radio had stopped working years back. The glass was cloudy with age.

She was leaning on the dashboard, caressing its plastic panelling and playing with the filtered sunlight that frolicked on her fingers. The rays danced on her skin to the tune of the road and the wheels meeting. This was the only sound that accompanied them on their travels.

“I love this car. It’s old and new and everything in between.”

The corners of his lips curled up in agreement.

The sky’s yellows danced on his black hair, turning it golden. Backlit, his profile was emphasized. The window frame held him in a portrait, much like cameos of days gone past. You could see the late afternoon’s colors split into rainbows in his eyes. His glasses only magnified them.

She steered her eyes away from the silhouette in the driver’s seat and looked to their yet undetermined destination. I think it was Home. He started to sing.

“Ooh la la…”

That was how Summer ended and Autumn began. Syllables harmonizing with the ordinary sound of rubber hitting asphalt. A faded green car crushing the dried leaves that had begun to fall. The sun clinging to the last few hours of day.

She was PMS-ing that day. Her aura flashed bright reds and oranges into the air, exploded along with the rants she had collected. Her sister was this. Her work was that. She hadn’t written anything in days. Had even forgotten how to draw faeries–those with flimsy wings that resembled leaves with fragile veins. Almost transparent when held up to the sun. She loved drawing those. However, it was firmly planted in her head that she had forgotten how.

Her words fell onto the ground and crumbled. Wisps of anger whose shadows immediately disappeared upon landing.

He watched them descend. Each rant fell in crescents, outlining the smile that plastered itself on his face. She was incensed and it amused him to watch her in this light. So fiery and out of herself. As if the flourescent bulbs emanated shades rather than brightness around her anger.

He took her into his arms in a swoop. She became still. The cold and dry wind from his lips lingered around her ear; lulling–shushing–her anger to sleep.

That was how Autumn ended and Winter began. With the clash of temperatures on her shoulder and the whish of comfort on the nape of her neck.

The smells dance with each other under the incandescent lights and make their way up her nostrils. The sight of pastries was meaningless enough. However, the scent–the sweet sweet smells of baking bread and piped frosting, became much more important. Infused with meaning. Who would’ve thought that a mixture of eggs, flour and sugar would be capable of holding memories?

It never did get old.

She texted him of her whereabouts while on the road–on the way to their safehaven, tucked publicly between the bakery and the donut shop. He’d always respond. Tell her that he’d be waiting, unmoved on the same spot every single day. She’d arrive and find him standing to the side of the hall. She assumed that he hummed the minutes of anticipation away. Or that he tapped his feet to silence. Or that he counted commuters like insomniacs counted sheep. Sometimes, she thought of him drowning in the sweet smells (as if nostrils had taste buds). His eyes would be closed and a smile would slowly form on his lips. “Delicious,” he’d think.

They say that smells are powerful in that they can bring back the most hidden of memories. Every day grew into a memory.

She finds him in between the bakery and the donut shop and lets him take her into his arms. They kiss short kisses. He pulls back and stares at her. Smiles.

Serendipitously, he asks, “Donuts?”

A friend asked me to illustrate her book for her. The result:

It isn’t perfect or anything but I’m sure that the images and the way the colors flowed into each other had been in my brain for over 2 weeks now. You know. You just know when things end up the way you imagined them. It feels so good to be drawing/illustrating again–to have purpose for a doodle.

The words blended with the darkness of the room, the rustle of the leaves as they hit his window’s jalousies, and the slivers of dim light that passing cars flashed onto the ceiling.

Her eyes adjusted. Squinting, she followed the blurry outline of his lips as they mouthed words like “different,” “happy,” and “special.”

She had been listening all this time, thinking of words that would compare to the cliches that had proven so true in their time together. Alas, none would suffice.

She hoped that he could see the smile forming on her chapped lips as well.

“I don’t see why you should be scared. I’m not other people.”

A Doctor Who reference rose from her throat and, before she could stop herself from destroying the perfect moment in the night, escaped in lightly delivered breath.

“You aren’t other people. You’re an Ood.” Oh no. Stop it. “A very cute Ood at that.”

She pinched his cheek playfully. Prepared to simply plop down on the mattress and let him bathe in the scene that she had so playfully wrecked with a pop culture reference. Stared up at the dancing lights on the ceiling.

His teeth gleamed in the dark.

Surely, that had been a smile. One that she reflected back into the night as his face moved closer.

(Please excuse the Doctor Who reference. Fascinations are beginning to come out in my snippets. Haha).

Fingers walked across the landscape of her waist until his hand, all five of his unkept fingers, settled on the slope of her stomach and began the ritual of lightly drawing eights on it. She lay still; kept her eyes closed regardless of the fact that her mind was awakening.

She shuffled her feet once more. The sheets rustled. The buzz grew louder. She opened the little slit of her left eye and peeked into the silver of oncoming daylight. The books on the shelf distorted so cohesively with the vapors. Her room, originally pink, drowned in the glow of a morning clinging on to the last colors of night.

His breath came up so close to her ear that a smirk plastered itself temporarily on her lips. A soft giggle, a form of surrender to the situation, escaped her throat.

The buzz rang louder.

She turned over to face the other side of her room, eyes still closed. Her hands moved over the rumpled sheets frantically. The buzz rang louder. He blew on her ear some more–teasing. His fingers drew eights on her waist at a much quicker pace.

She opened her eyes and met the light that came off a frosted-over screen.

“I just want to embrace you. Maybe later. Sleep.”

The phone landed with a muffled thud. She closed her eyes and waited for the drawn eights on her waist to lull her to silver slumbers.

Her breathing halted. She had just told him the terrible news. His breaths synchronised with hers. Halting in the silence between the spaces of people’s stunted yammering. The mall was full. They were in the dark.

Corners closed in and the darkness widened. She stared down at her navel as he drew crop circles around it. His fingers snuck under her shirt and lingered on the flimsy blonde-ish hairs that littered her stomach; prodding for some air to come inside.

Pleasant.

He took her hand and brought her even closer.

Sniffles. If breathing was a lesson, she had aced the test. They inhaled at exactly the same time and let the air out in each others’ mouths.

All was quiet. All was pleasant.

Her hands were caught in a flurry of gestures. Other than the fact that she was not confident with her sense of direction, she too was busy double-checking the inside of her bag for things she might’ve forgotten. Just imagine one hand waving oh-so freely in his personal space and the other seemingly stuck inside her purse; siphoned by Scylla and Charybdis, never to return.

His eyes alternated between looking at the road and looking at her. She noticed and stared back. A smile easily slid onto her lips.

“I told you to turn left.”

He nodded and proceeded to do so at the next corner.

She dropped her purse on the floor and stared at him as he drove slowly around the village. Not a word was uttered as the chorus inside her head grew louder. He nonchalantly put his hand over hers and continued finding a route out of the labyrinth so close to her home.

The car stopped as she leaned in to give him a kiss. Gracious rain began to fall.