Within the Clouds

It’s disturbing to know how I’m always lingering, swimming in that wellspring of emotion, like an old brush dipped in an inkwell until the black is deep enough to write with. The compulsion to mold my thoughts into actual words is almost unstoppable -- a disease constantly seeping out from my bloody, pulsating organs, through my fingers, and onto the keyboard. The voices will not grant me a moment’s peace. “Write,” they breathe in my ear. “There is no other cure but to let the words flow out from inside.”

And, unapologetically so, I let them.

•••
“Do you know what a fog of war is?” I asked him. It was such a cold, cold morning when we were headed out to explore Baguio during the first day of our stay. Not that it was unusual for a place situated high above the mountains. The winds in this altitude were almost alive, like little kids careening through the atmosphere, playing before the whole world completely wakes up. “No, what is it?” A slight shiver as he buried his hands deep inside the pockets of his windbreaker.

I glanced at him as we were trudging along the constantly ascending and descending streets of Session Road, looking for something left unsaid, sensing for something left hanging in the air. A glimmer, and it was gone. I continued the conversation. “If you’ve played a role-playing game on a PC before, it’s the uncharted section on the map covered in black ‘fog.’ It clears up as you travel through the area, discovering different territories, letting the rest of the story unfold.”

“I see,” he whispered. I wanted to hold his hand. Walking the fringes of such a vast landscape of uncharted territory looming over me was, in all essence, both scary and exciting. To be here, now, with him... somehow gives me strength.

However as it turns out, my fear was not unfounded and my excitement might have been an illusion (delusion?) for something else. Within three short days, my original intent of spending an issue-less birthday was pushed further and further into my mind, and I was instead enshrouded in a sense of intemperance just by being with him. I became too childish, careless, and I was caught off guard until I realized it at the last day when we were about to go home.

“Are these clouds?” I asked him. The bus was cruising down the side of the mountain, and what was supposed to be overlooking the landscape was instead a field of pure whiteness, like a sea of swirling dreams. “It's actually fog,” he said. “But from down the mountain it might seem like clouds.” I pressed my head to the cool glass window, and I felt something break inside me. “I see.”

Now it's been a week since we were there. Gravity hasn't caught up with me yet, and little pieces of my heart were still floating aimlessly in the clouds. Baguio has left me bereft of warmth, but I would give anything to go back. “I miss Baguio,” he txted a few nights ago. It took a while before I was able to send out a reply. “I think about it a lot,” I txted back.

“I see.”