#jan 5 2016

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[robrongifs]

[ofjoysandwoes]

january five ‘16;

What is the night?

The smart ones will say that the night is the period of darkness between a sunset and a sunrise; and then they would tell you that the Earth rotates on its own axis and babble further about an axial tilt of 23.4 degrees and drone later on about how this obliquity form the four seasons and on and on they speak.

I am not smart, and frankly I don't care about rotations and axial tilts and shit. But I tell you that not even science and all its space machines have the same breadth of familiarity of the evening sky which I have mastered over years of furtively flirting with its allure.

Let me tell you something about the night: it hears you. From the whispered wishes you lay on starlight when you were eight, to the hushed moans you whimper with your partner onto pillows when you grew slightly older.

Not only that, the night listens to you. It has laid witness to your sporadic bursts of emotions and your whiplash-inducing mood swings; and mind you, the night, in all its omnipotence, does not forget a thing.

The night also seduces you. There is a queer, lustful fervor that comes with being devoid of vision. It beckons to you to creep into the point of no return, where it lashes at and constricts around you like a vise.

It calls out to you to embrace it. It swears that its presence is eternal. However, underneath its cloak of black are crossed fingers. The night is deceitful. Watch how it leaves you hanging at its promises once the daylight starts to break.

--

It's a quarter before six in the morning here at Cebu. The first rays of the sun are beginning to peek through the curtains; and soon, most people will be on their feet while we, the romantics, yield to our beds; worn and beaten after another fruitless affair with the night.

Now let me tell you one last thing about the night:

The night must not be trusted.

Good night.