Cloud Catalog #165.

I wish I could tell you everything, but since I have stopped writing here I feel that putting feelings into words is no longer important, no longer relevant to anyone or to anything even to myself.

But yesterday was something I'd like to recall, or at least look back on because I remember doing the same thing when High Violet was released.

Trouble Will Find Me was leaked two days ago and since my laptop kept crashing I only managed to listen to it yesterday. The first thing I did when I arrived at the office was download it, and fortunately, since doing that was forbidden, I was able to do so without getting reprimanded. So download I did, and funny how the simple act of transferring the tracks to iTunes made me weak, so feeble, frailed by the easiness of the task.

I had work to do that day, a bit heavy in fact, but from time to time I switched to this window. How calming it was, how liberating. I was happy it turned out to be good upon first listen.

And as you can see in that photo, I browsed through some old posts I wrote on The National. I even came across an entry I wrote after I first listened to High Violet. April 2010, a time when Iya and Nanay were still alive. They saw me playing the album in the living room so many times. Mostly on the weekend. They listened to that album, unconsciously, I played it and I knew they heard it. They knew how much I loved it. Now both of them have departed.

That same morning Petra and I were texting each other, gushing, obviously sharing the same feeling. Then she said: 

And it's weird being told this because sometimes, out of vanity and self-centeredness, I feel that it's true.

I listened, listened, and listened. A number of phrases made me tremble:

I have only two emotions Careful fear and dead devotion. I can’t get the balance right. Throw all my marbles in the fire. I see all the ones I wept for All the things I had it in for I won’t cry until I hear 'Cause I was not supposed to be here.

Oh, when I lift you up you feel Like a hundred times yourself I wish everybody knew What's so great about you 

Let’s go wait out in the fields with the ones we love. 

I'm in the city you hated My eyes are falling Counting the clicks with the living dead My eyes are red 

There's a science to walking through windows without you 

Am I the one you think about When you're sitting in your faintin' chair drinking pink rabbits? 

Tunnel vision lights my way Leave a little life today

I listened to it more intently after work. I walked around two bookstores in Alabang Town Center, and I guess I felt so happy that I bought books and realized how I'd poor I'd be in the coming days.

Life is short. Make the most out of it. Embrace its sadness and joy. Its pain and pleasure. Look forward, look back, it doesn't matter. Just live.