Vera

We shed the hastiness of booking hotels and going on road trips at every instance of a long weekend. I embraced the satisfaction to be found from staying put. There is nothing we are missing. It's here, right in our kitchen and living room and loft living room and bedrooms and dining room and billiards room and pantry and balcony and our wide, wide, wide garden, our space breathing and moving with us—a perpetual push and pull of mess and structure. I just need to settle into the nothingness of a weekend, and it can stretch itself into what feels like an entire week of pure family. Home in July, 2026

  ...are all in black. dull black on a rug left hanging, home, 2001  Last night, I went out of the house and slept inside the van for at least two hours. Ate Ivy was very much upset and angry with me (because of very much valid reasons, yes...). I felt like the house suddenly shrank like that little globe of a "lemonsito;" and, mind you, it didn't feel good inside, my senses confused whether I was the seed or the juice evaporating towards nowhere in particular. With the middle seat conveniently slapped down halfway its length, I rested my body. "I want to suffocate and die," was that cliché chant inside my head, and then out of my mouth; like those children's games with songs in them, the ones that you keep repeating, in a monotonous kind of way, the ones you absentmindedly sing in front of your breakfast plate. The fluorescent lamp of the parking area, with hazy light patterns through the tinted glass, caught my attention, and I turned to chanting, "An...

Christmas vacation has started, and I find myself restless. Last night, I had difficulty sleeping, watching shadows play on the unfinished wall in Tita Maricar's room, shifting from side to side and stubbornly refusing a blanket. Blankets at night are rare for me. Slowly breaking through the daylight -- Coldplay is literally blasting in my ears, a little piece of Jay without his selfishness in my ears, and Russ's company while he's not here, laughing and thinking with me. Songs and artists pass through me like light, something you take in without minding the science behind it. That's me. Not your typical music lover. The names and titles do not stay, just their rhythms and their stories. Yesterday, I read a book with the headphones on, an alternation of a woman's voice saying, "I will not let them ruin me," and an instrumental that sounds straight from the big screen, the soundtrack of an epic film. Lines from songs, lines from the book - they all come was...