I Wake Up Tentacular

In Coron, the weather is steadily feral and unaccommodating. Besides Mt. Tapyas, every ideal pretty place to hang out in and contemplate the apocalypse, every pretty place is a boat ride away. I've been renting a room at the foot of the mountain. Every morning, I go on a pilgrimage to hike, anticipate the sunrise, and draw the skyburn inside my eyes. To purge every molecule of shitty vibe absorbed from the day before. So I am clean for the day ahead. Then again, this is my own little religion, my everyday ritual, patterned after my sketchy vision of nature. I sweat out into poses later and climb a strangler tree to read a book, before heading back home for shower and writing work. Or I visit my favorite bar, talk to artists and musicians, and pretend to be interesting.

Every morning, I go on a pilgrimage to hike, anticipate the sunrise, and draw the skyburn inside my eyes.

So far, I've been around El Nido and Coron. I guess my only favorite spot is eastern El Nido during Amihan season. Other than that, the heat reigns supreme. I'm darkly sunbaked from staying outdoors too long I can pass off as a tree. I am a tree. Currently in a relationship with a tree. The strangler tree, or balete tree, I climb it almost everyday. I talk to it, and it me. I love touching its heavy trunk, its sinuous, crawly branches, and cooling myself in the shade of its green leaves, cracked with soft sun. Giant red ants and pointy-beaked black birds live there too. And together we make up a small ecosystem of transient animals feeding off the tree's sacred spaces.

By Tuesday, I'm having my sidebelly inked with a huge octopus tattoo. In a recurring dream I wake up an animal. I wake up a ghastly octopus, gravitating in a dark and heavy, cold place. Deaf and blind, I grasp the world merely by tentacular feeling. My choice of weapon is black ink, my only mode of expression, drawn from the ancient juice of the ocean. Maybe the octopus is my personal inner beast. If I were born an animal, I must be tentacular.

Maybe the octopus is my personal inner beast. If I were born an animal, I must be tentacular.

I met an artist in town, who is similarly a nomad. He said the best place he's ever lived in the country is in Sagada. Ideal. Maybe I will move there soon. In the meantime my quest of a writing sanctuary (and home) continues.

// 16 Apr 2017