Fragments of the Quiet Mind

  I remember sitting alone in a crowded room, the air thick with unspoken words. Around me, laughter bubbled and voices rose, but my own thoughts were a fragile thread, barely holding. Somewhere in that noise, a name was mentioned — hers — and suddenly the room seemed smaller, the light dimmer, as if a shadow had slipped through the cracks. It wasn’t just a story being told. It was a fracture, a fissure in the smooth surface of what we had all pretended was safe. The #MeToo movement began as a simple phrase — a way for survivors of sexual harassment and assault to say, Me too. It grew into a tidal wave, a collective outpouring of truth that exposed the hidden scale of abuse embedded in systems of power. It’s a movement that refused to let silence be the default, turning private pain into public reckoning. But beyond the headlines and hashtags, it is a profound shift in how we understand consent, autonomy, and the very nature of freedom. This movement is that fissure made visible...

Losing your keys is the quiet rebellion of order against itself. At first, it feels like life has hiccuped. The kind of rupture so small it shouldn’t matter, yet manages to unhinge everything. You check your bag three times, then the counter, then the jacket you haven’t worn in a week. It's not about the keys anymore. It's about what their absence unravels. Because keys aren't just metal. They are continuity. They are the mundane rituals that trick us into believing the world makes sense — that if you follow the same path each day, you'll arrive somewhere familiar. But when keys disappear, the path collapses. Suddenly you’re not just late—you’re disoriented, unmoored, estranged from your own routine. And in that moment, a door becomes a symbol. Not of what's locked, but of how little you understand your own thresholds. How many doors have you opened without knowing what they kept out? How many times have you walked in without noticing what you left behind? The l...

 There is no justification for walking into a place of worship with a weapon. No cause, no grievance, no theory—nothing—can make sense of that kind of cruelty. To kill people in the middle of prayer is not rebellion, it is desecration. It is not rage—it is rot. The kind that begins in the soul and spreads through history, disguised as ideology. On October 27, 2018, a man entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire. Eleven people were murdered. It was the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in U.S. history. And yet, somehow, it wasn’t surprising. The world had been inching toward this—subtly, then shamelessly. Hatred no longer hid. It posted. It shouted. It ran for office. It wore suits and badges and usernames and smirks. And when it pulled the trigger that morning, it did so with the confidence of someone who had already been told: yes, you belong here too. The Tree of Life. Etz Chaim. A name that echoes through both scripture and longing. A symbol of ...

I remember the news trickling in, the way the earth gave way in Benguet and Cebu — houses swallowed, lives buried beneath rubble that was once the land we called home. It’s easy to point fingers at mining companies, at open-pit scars carved like wounds across the mountainside. But what about us? What part do we play in this quiet violence? Mining is a cruel pact. We dig not just for gold or minerals, but for the promise of progress. We tell ourselves the earth will forgive us, that the price we pay is worth the convenience and wealth it offers. But the land does not forgive — it remembers. The landslide is not just soil collapsing; it’s the earth’s way of whispering a bitter truth: we are strangers here, not masters. The calls to ban mining are calls to respect a fragile balance we have long ignored. Yet, the complexity of survival in a place like the Philippines makes this no simple moral judgment. The people who rely on mining for livelihood are caught in the same web of contradict...

It started with a simple question from a cousin at dinner: "Would you still vaccinate your future kids after all that Dengvaxia stuff?" I had just taken a bite of kare-kare. I chewed for a bit longer than necessary. Not because I didn’t have an answer, but because I knew the moment I opened my mouth, I’d become the uninvited spokesperson for science, ethics, and a country’s fractured trust. There’s something absurd about the way we treat public health here. We throw away decades of medical progress faster than we throw rice at a wedding, then panic when outbreaks arrive like uninvited relatives during fiesta. We trusted science — until it made a mistake. And like every Filipino family feud, we never truly recover. We just stop speaking to each other and pretend everything’s fine. For the past Months, the name "Dengvaxia" spread faster than the disease it was meant to prevent. A vaccine meant to protect became a symbol of betrayal. And suddenly, everyone was a...

I never realized how deeply clothes could carry judgment until the moment I wore someone else’s story — not my own. Garments are not mere fabric; they are the silent language of power and belonging. To wear something is to submit, willingly or not, to the narratives others assign you. The politics of clothing is a quiet violence — a coercion that shapes not just appearance, but identity itself. We blame the wearer, as if the thread is woven with guilt, as if the choice to dress is a confession of allegiance or defiance. Yet the fabric never lies; it only reflects the invisible hands that weave society’s rules. Judging fabric is easier than unraveling the threads of power. We dress each morning not just for weather or work — but for safety, for translation, for code-switching. Clothes are the unspoken treaties between self and society, signed in silence. And still, no matter how carefully you dress, you cannot undress someone else's assumptions. Clothes do not clothe us. They dre...

You ever sit at the dinner table, trying to explain something you just learned about the world—like systemic racism, gender identity, or climate change—and watch your family nod politely but clearly just waiting for you to finish? Yeah, that’s my life. Being “woke” in a family that isn’t feels like shouting underwater. You know the words, the concepts, the nuances, but the room stays heavy and silent, like you’re speaking a language no one else remembers how to hear. I’ve gotten so used to dialing back my passion or twisting my words so they don’t sound like accusations but invitations—kind of like explaining a complicated joke. And sometimes, that’s exhausting. It’s lonely in a way that’s hard to explain. Because on one hand, I want to scream, Why can’t you see this? But on the other, I know that waking up is a slow, personal journey. Some days, I’m patient. Other days, I’m not. I’m learning that “woke” isn’t just about knowing the right terms or politics—it’s about choosing love ...

It was a quiet morning in Baguio, I'm off to my usual morning run, when I heard a child speaking broken Ilocano with a cadence that didn’t quite belong here. His mother, wrapped in layers too thin for the mountain cold, held his hand too tightly—like someone afraid of losing something else. I didn’t ask where they came from. I didn’t need to. You can recognize dislocation even in silence. It has a certain weight. Like a suitcase packed with the wrong memories. We talk about refugees as if they all cross oceans, but some just cross rivers, or barbed wire, or city lines. And some don’t even move at all—they’re just slowly pushed out of the center of their own lives. Not every exile is geographic. Sometimes, it’s spiritual. Cultural. Bureaucratic. We measure displacement in kilometers, but it is better measured in lost language, eroded rituals, in the way children forget how to name the trees their ancestors worshipped. What makes a home isn’t the walls, but the ability to imagine ...

Sometimes... words fall short of explanation and are deemed worthless. Sometimes... It's not with anyone telling us things, nor with anyone interpreting things for us, but it's with anyone not making words at all... Sometimes... mumbles, are enough to fill your head, these un-worded sounds are enough to exhume the deepness of your thoughts with an inexplicable silence that commands everything else. Sometimes... We are at the brink of believing that this is the hitch in the universe's breath. When the universe itself pauses to listen; When the universe takes you out of yourself. Sometimes... It is that same silence which takes you out of your smallness, takes you and gathers you with it - No concept of causality around... It is the silence that moves us... it is the silence which stills.

I remember the first time I caught myself censoring a story. Not because I wanted to, but because I was afraid. Afraid that the words I chose would mark me as “other,” or worse, unsafe. It was subtle—a hesitation before speaking, a carefully edited sentence—but it was there, like a quiet tremor before an earthquake. Language policing isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s a whispered warning, a sideways glance, or the slow erasure of dialects and accents. It’s the constant pressure to speak the way power expects us to—neatly, politely, “correctly.” For marginalized communities, this isn’t just about words; it’s about survival. When your language is policed, your identity gets clipped at the edges. You start to doubt if your stories are valid if your voice deserves space. Freedom of expression becomes a minefield, where one misstep can mean exclusion or worse—silencing. But here’s the thing: language is alive. It breathes the culture, history, pain, and joy of a people. To police it is to...

There is a street that divides a city like a scar. On one side, the shadows fall soft, gentle against freshly painted walls. On the other, the sunlight hits cracked concrete, broken glass, forgotten corners. The fence is invisible, but the boundary is sharp, carved into the very bones of the place. Cities are not neutral vessels. They are repositories of history, of choices made quietly but decisively. The architecture we walk through is not just shelter—it is a map of power, a ledger of exclusion. In zoning laws and highways that cleave neighborhoods in half, in the silent distance between a bus stop and a playground, the city declares who belongs and who is barred. This segregation is a wound that runs deep beneath the surface. It fractures the soul of the city and the souls within it. Proximity becomes illusion—two children playing blocks apart, separated by the weight of forgotten promises. A geography of loneliness, where hope is fenced in, gated, kept at bay. The city’s archit...

Twirling, churning, spinning….. Gephyrophobia…  Never in my wildest dreams did I consider this a fear, nor did I think that this is even possible. (Coz who the heck is afraid of bridges, right?).  In what appears like a cruel joke being played by Fate on me, NEVER did it occur to me that of all the possible phobias (besides arachnophobia. Who in their fudgin’ right state of mind isn’t afraid of spiders --- ) In a satiric twist of fate, the universe seemed to play this one on me. Okay, Universe, you won this round! I am not afraid of heights, in fact I love heights. I love hiking mountains. I love standing at the edge of cliffs, buildings or in any high place and bask on that ephemeral feeling where anxiety transforms to bliss. I love the  thrill of having that breeze touch your face and your shirt pressing against the wind.  I dwell on that ineffable feeling of being on top as you gaze at the world below you. HOWEVER, looking at the scene below while on a b...