I imagine myself as a monk full of silent wisdom standing on a 70 meter cliff. I imagine my piercing orange cloak billowing like a raging sea of fiery orange and the mountain air hitting my face with humid air that reminds me of petrichor and forest smells.
And the past 12 months start flashing before my eyes. As always, I feel my other senses waking up.
I feel the cold January air when I climbed Mount Pulag and stretching my arms to feel the magic of being up in the clouds. I felt like I could touch the sky. I feel the green surrounding me and the sharp pain of a cramp that attacked me halfway. I remember trees and greens and greens that seemed to stretch forever.
I smell secondhand smoke from Fridays Spent at Black Market, Saturdays at Valkyrie, or Sundays at Irie and a lot of places in between. I taste the bitter liquor and the taste of beer I grew to love. I remember them and the smells of dark and comfortable places. A stranger kisses my neck. I feel hands grabbing my arm and me running away to high places away from boys who replaced me with the next girl. I remember being drunk and crying for my camera, and thinking no boy would ever break my heart just so.
I remember pizza and kropek by the ocean in Bohol and a musician who spent the night singing Beatles songs for me.
I can feel the wood under my feet as I prepared to jump from a cliff and almost immediately after, the water hitting my whole body and it feels so good, like a montage from a movie, or an ad for a perfume. I remember rising to the surface like a buoy and my knees shaking and never feeling more free. Then swimming to shore.
I remember zipping myself up in a hammock out of exhaustion and a bonfire with strangers and a bus of happy children trying to keep the driver awake so we wouldn't die. I remember little kids leading me by the hand and saying they were looking for me when I missed half of my own event.
I remember solitary nights on the rooftop, the distant sounds of my city and feeling safe in solitude. I also remember the plane climbing up and up and feeling a strange sense of belonging to Manila and all it’s chaos.
I feel the sunlight filtering through the trees of Mekong and I hear the busy sea of motorcycles and a sharp intake of breath thinking how I am going to cross this street. I remember experiencing gravity in Vietnam, staring at a boy for what felt like eternity and wanting to just get close and kiss him. I remember going up a stage dancing to apple bottom jeans boots with the fur.
I remember feeling groggy and being hit with excitement remembering that I am going somewhere and travelling again.
I remember running around in Boracay and dancing with everyone at a party and feeling like I am in sync with the universe and I could take a mountain troll right here right now. My energy rising in the company of so many people high on life. I can feel someone lifting me up and looking at the lights and it was one the stupidly pretty things I have ever seen in patterns of green. I remember my feet being set down on the ground and experiencing the first kiss of my life. And it felt like firecrackers were exploding in my brain.
I remember the cold air and the majestic outline of Batulao against the night sky and it felt so mysterious I was compelled to whisper. I remember feeling cramped but happy, fitting 3 friends in a 2 person tent that can barely fit 2 people. I remember rope burn and the exhilaration in every summit, every one like the first one.
I remember dropping on my first wave and not falling down, I remember asphalt and cruising for the first time in my skateboard in an obscure park in Makati. I passed the streetlights in a blur.
I remember lillies and a secret lake and waves so powerful and riding on the prows of boats and playing with the ocean. I remember sharing seats in a bus with chickens with prostitutes and a man who is attempting commiting adultery. I remember the raspy voice of a stranger and his guitar singing starry starry night while the power was out to a girl alone and lost in a station.
I remember being in the car, with all the people I love and I hear the Christmas songs playing and the sky was orange and sun was a warm fiery hole in the cosmos bathing us with light.
Yup, I have never felt more in sync with my age group.
