ze dilettante

i am knee-deep in muck, and would need more than chocolate frogs for my redemption.

severus, please. send me your doe.

you wondered if i was going to wait for you. and you didn’t mean to ask me in the first place. it was me, of course. forgive me, i was in one of those “what are you thinking?” moods. i didn’t mean to squeeze it out of you.

but you asked, and i said i would if you wanted me to.

i knew i shouldn’t, but i held on to that question. as if that wasn’t painful enough, i had to ask if you meant it.

you said no.

dammit, you said no. i know that was aeons ago, and that’s probably inconsequential now, but it still hurts when i remember how you told me i was ending your dream.

it still fucking hurts.

have you forgotten me,

grown mindless of me?

tell me i am not writing into an abyss

or that is what will become of my heart.

please do not take the sunshine away.

i am pissed. i am soooooooo pissed. don’t tell me not to feel bad because i already feel horrible, you moronic scumbag.

it rises and ebbs.

does anyone ask why?

i’ve been looking forward to mickey’s birthday for months, even going back to the days when i wasn’t supposed to count the days to his birthday. we have always been friends, yeah, and i love my friends, but i don’t get excited over friends’ birthdays just like that. but mickey? he’s always been special. not special in a funny kind of way, though. i just knew, even when we first met, that there was more to him than what the world saw.

so when august 26 showed no signs of not arriving, i had to put on my thinking cap and come up with superfragilisticexpialidocious gift ideas. i’m a lame gift giver, so the event really required a think. and thought i did. i wanted whatever gift idea i come up with to be the best ever, because this is the first time we’re spending his birthday together. woot.

it wasn’t easy, though. not because i was scared he wouldn’t like what i’d give him (he’s not hard to please at all. i could blow him a kiss and he’d be like any feline high on catnip), but because i thought i won’t be able to pull the surprise off – he wouldn’t let me out of sight if he can help it (which i find really cute and sweet, and not toothache-inducing at all).

so i got sneaky and crafty (good thing he went on leave from work) – i asked our teammates to write him birthday notes, bought him a bottle of perfume (which soooooooo reminds me of Christmas, when it all started), Philips earphones (which he tells me he loves because they sound like original iPod earphones. and they do. last night he let me listen to tuck and patti’s time after time on them and my, the bass was just superb) for his iPod, a dragon action figure (which is a story in itself, and warrants a blog entry of its own) , and a papemelroti box big enough to place  everything in.

now for the dragon action figure. i didn’t really want to get him the toy at first because i had other things in mind. but i had resource limitations, and because i already got the perfume and the earphones, i  settled for the most achievable item remaining in my list – a dragon action figure. he didn’t really like dragons; there was just this one time we were out with the guys and he seemed to be sulking in a corner. i told him he looked like a dragon because the smoke from his cigarette seemed to be coming out of his nose.  days after i saw him surfing the interweb for dragons. “do you know why i’m interested in dragons?”

“no.”

“so you’ve forgotten, huh?”

“what’s there to remember?”

“the other night. you told me i looked like a dragon.”  i was joking, and what i said was just in passing, so i was really surprised he remembered that remark. if there’s one thing i love about mickey, it’s how every little thing seems new to him. when i look at him i see a little child seeing something for the first time – so unlike the jaded me.

and there was this time i was really in the doldrums, and wishing to rise from the stump i was in, i bought chocolate-flavored ice lolly. as if that wasn’t enough, i went on to buy a chocolate ice cream cone, and then some chocolate bars. there was a big question on mickey’s face. not really wanting to talk, i told him i was being plagued by dementors, and since there were no chocolate frogs at hand, i’m settling for any kind of chocolate. “how do you drive dementors away?” he asked.

“you cast a patronus spell. the chocolate is just for regaining your strength after the dementors go away.”

later that day he was on the computer again, looking up patronuses. told me he was sending me his patronum. “you’re sending me your patronus, not your patronum,” i said, correcting him. “you only use patronum when you’re casting the spell. so you say ‘expecto patronum!’ when you want to conjure a patronus.” i told him that snape’s patronum is a doe, just like lily potter’s, and that harry’s is a stag. he asked me what my patronus was.

“i don’t know. a giant toad, maybe.”

“oh. mine’s a dragon.” again, that heart-melting grin. the next thing i know, his phone was sporting a dragon wallpaper.  “this is dragon sid .”  the name was funny (it was taken from the brand name of  a snack); still, i melted yet again.

so i trekked to the toy store. near the entrance i saw a glass cabinet displaying, among other toys, two impressive dragon figures. nice, i thought. i don’t really like asking store help for assistance (i don’t like how they hover over me while i look at stuff) , so i went to the aisle labeled ‘action figures.’  no luck. the dragons i fell in love with weren’t there, so i had to ask for help. “excuse me, do you have dragon action figures?”

“uhm, ah…” the lady quite eloquently told me. i have to give her credit- she was very honest in telling me that hey, she did not know what the heck i was asking about. she turned to a coworker and said, “hey, ma’am here is looking for dragons. do we have dragons?”

“oh yeah,” and then he turned to me, “but they’re rubber dragons ma’am, and are quite small.”

“can i go see ‘em?” he brought me to this aisle and what do i see? things i used to buy for my kid cousins when they were what? 3-5 years old. so i was like, “uhm, do you have toys for big kids? adults, even?”

“no, ma’am.” what does he mean no? what about those dragons in the glass case?

“okay, thank you.”

i went back to the glass case and called a store crew standing nearby. “uh, are these for sale?” i asked, pointing to em lovely dragons.

“these are assembled, ma’am.” wrong answer to a perfectly logical question.

“so are they for sale?”

“oh yes, they are.”

“can i be directed to where the unassembled, for sale dragons are?”

the lady i was talking to passed me on to someone who (finally!) knows where to bring me. i saw probably two or three of these yet unborn creatures (the pieces were inside dragon eggs probably around six inches tall. i chose a red (mickey’s favorite color) dragon, and immediately knew he’d love it.

and he did. when we started assembling the toy i was like a kid getting her first Christmas present. i was grinning ear to ear, just sorting through the pieces and putting them together. i hate mush and cheese, but i felt only pure, uabashed joy as i sat beside him on his birthday, tinkering with his patronus.

the cherry on my cake? that schoolboy grin and the sparkle in his eyes as he thanked me for bringing sid to life.

amazing how one cartoon i sooooo looked forward to seeing because it’s got a grumpy old man and a chubby lil kid with semi-japanese eyes as characters could make me cry the first two minutes after it starts.

phooey.

and it didn’t help that the pixar guys wanted to give the UP audience something extra by giving em a lil something to sniff about through Partly Cloudy, a short animation about how babies (human and otherwise) are made and are delivered right to their parents’ doorstep by egrets (not storks because storks have differently designed beaks, as mickey pointed out).

and i thought life had taught me how not to be a crybaby anymore. with the way i look at and react to everyday events, one would think that my constitution had been hardened up and is, therefore, impenetrable. i can almost see mickey reading this and saying, “see, you’re not the ice queen, after all.”

oh yeah, which reminds me that he told himself this yesterday while he quietly sat beside me on the love seat, holding me as my lachrymal glands humiliated me to no end (oh okay, only until the part when carl was finally able to fly his house – from this point onwards everything was as predictable as any kid movie can be).

this is what it is. no explanations necessary.

this time, i mean to keep what i have promised myself in countless other blogs before: this is the last i’m ever going to create. i’d keep my password secure, would keep the email account i used to sign up active, and most important of all, make sure i update not only when i want to, but when i NEED to.

i want my Muse back, not only temporarily, and the only way to lure her back is to bleed until the words come out. i know yet another blog is a futile attempt, but i’m in it now. i have to go back to writing, whether i get a following or not, whether i get smug reading my entries or not.

it’d make me really happy to say that i’m doing this for you, mickey, but we both know i’m doing this more for myself than for anyone else.