Fragments of the Quiet Mind

  The soul is a fragile and ephemeral thing.   Tethered to the body like a ship to an anchor, it navigates the treacherous waters of existence with uncertain footing, and most often than not, unsure of its own direction. Like a lone sailor adrift in the boundless ocean, the soul searches for a purpose, a beacon of light to guide its journey through the tempestuous waves of life. It navigates through treacherous waters with an uncertain footing, buffeted by the winds of fate and tossed about by the capricious tides of destiny. The very essence of its being is an unquenchable thirst for meaning, a yearning to discover the purpose that lies beyond the horizon. With every sunrise and sunset, it scans the horizon in search of that elusive guiding star, that flicker of hope that will keep it on course. It struggles against the relentless currents that threaten to pull it under, fighting with all its might to stay afloat. Yet, even in the darkest of nights, it clings to the belief th...

In 1905, Albert Einstein introduced his theory of relativity—special and general—and somewhere along the line, humanity began to obsess not with the science itself but with what it could mean if taken far enough: time travel, wormholes, bending space, escaping consequences. The concept of a space-time continuum didn’t just revolutionize physics; it gave cinema an infinite playground. Back to the Future, Jumper, Time Stoppers, Interstellar—maybe we're not really chasing science, but a loophole. At this very moment, I'm mid-marathon, swimming through sci-fi timelines and parallel dimensions, wondering if I, too, can somehow slow down time by simply not participating in it. Maybe that’s what movie marathons are—a refusal to acknowledge the clock. Not a break from reality, but a deliberate skewing of it. It’s not time travel, but it feels like it. And feelings—though unquantifiable—sometimes govern the way we understand laws we cannot rewrite. Einstein’s theory is brilliant, n...

It starts with a sound—a footstep, a laugh, a name said too softly. Then silence. Then the echo. And it never really sounds like the original, does it? Slightly stretched, slightly delayed, slightly lonelier. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. How echoes work. How they’re just sound waves bouncing off surfaces—walls, mountains, empty rooms. Science says they’re reflections of energy. But it feels deeper than that. It feels like proof that the past never really leaves. Just changes shape. I read somewhere that sound never truly disappears; it just gets quieter, swallowed by time. That somewhere, in some imperceptible way, every word I’ve spoken is still rippling outward, endlessly diluted, endlessly persistent. That haunts me. Because if that’s true, then all the things I’ve said in anger, in longing, in love—they’re still out there, decaying in slow motion. Still traveling. Still arriving. Maybe that’s why certain places feel heavy even when they’re empty. Rooms hold mor...

There is a dangerous comfort in the allure of light—an intoxicating promise that the path is clearer, the way easier, if only we stay within its warmth. But light can deceive.  The light we chase often conceals more than it reveals, casting shadows where the truth lies hidden, muted beneath the glow. We are taught to seek clarity, to avoid the darkness, as if the absence of light is inherently perilous. Yet, is it not in the shadows, in the absence of external illumination, that we come to see ourselves most clearly? To shatter the lamps is not to reject light, but to abandon the reliance on artificiality, on the comfort of being told what is good, what is right, and what is true.  The pursuit of truth often lies in the untamed, in the darkness that offers space for reflection and revelation. It is in this darkened space that we are not shielded by comforting assumptions but confronted with the rawness of existence.  There, in the absence of blinding lights, we have no c...

Do you hear the echoes, reverberating through the corridors of your mind? Memories, elusive and unforgiving, wrap their tendrils around your thoughts, playing a relentless game of hide and seek. Forgetting, they say, is the logical response to life's tragic joke. But perhaps, just perhaps, you spoke too soon. In the depths of your melancholic streaks, something stirred within you. Terrifying existential thoughts danced with ideas, casting a flickering light upon the shadows of your understanding. It's as if, in some peculiar way, you have been granted a glimpse of enlightenment, a fragment of comprehension in the vast tapestry of existence. Memories themselves do not inflict pain; it is our perception of them that does. The labels we attach—embarrassing, painful, blissful—those determine their weight. See, some souls cringe in utter humiliation at a person who stumbles down the stairs, while others doesn’t give a rat’s-ass and merely shrug on it. It is the lens ...

There are people who don’t look at you — they watch you. And there’s a difference. Looking is human. Watching is something else. It’s that strange hunger that lingers in the shadows of civility — quiet, but not kind. You can feel it in the silence between “how are yous” and the hollow click of a like that doesn’t mean I see you , but rather I’m keeping count. Watching, always watching — not out of care or curiosity, but calculation. They say envy is a mirror held by the weak. But no one warns you what it’s like to live under its gaze. There’s something profoundly unnerving about being perceived through someone else’s unfinished wounds. You become a reflection of everything they buried — their doubts, their failed chances, the versions of themselves they gave up on. And still, they watch. Not because they care who you are, but because they cannot bear that you’ve become something they didn’t have the courage to imagine for themselves. It’s not hatred, exactly. It’s fascin...

Memory isn’t a photograph. It’s a murmur in a dark room. A smell, a shift in light, the sudden ache when a song you forgot you loved finds you again. It arrives uninvited, but familiar—like someone who used to know you well. I used to believe memory told the truth. But lately, I’m not so sure. The more I revisit the past, the more it changes. Not drastically, not all at once—but like a shoreline slowly pulled into new shapes by the tide. One day you notice the sand isn't where it used to be. There are scenes I return to that feel real but never happened. A conversation with someone who never said the right thing, but in my memory, they do. A touch that never landed, yet still leaves warmth. I don’t think that’s lying. I think that’s longing, trying to make sense of itself. Sometimes, I miss the version of me that existed in those imagined moments. The me who was loved better, understood more clearly. And maybe that’s what memory really is: not a record, but a refuge. A softer w...

“Some people fade the loudest when they leave in silence.” Most of the day was spent watching that tiny green dot appear and disappear. Not hoping—just noticing. Like waiting for a storm that never fully arrives. A one-word reply was enough to hold the whole weight of an unfinished history. Nothing dramatic ever happened. No final fight. Just a slow erosion. The kind that doesn’t make noise until it’s already gone. Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that this thing—whatever it was—had weight. Had velocity. Something unnameable, but not imaginary. There’s a particular silence that comes with knowing too much and saying nothing. We thread ourselves between lines, overanalyzing tone, spacing, absence. And in that absence, we find a weird kind of clarity. Understanding without explanation. Agreement without contact. Melpomene doesn’t wail here. She hums. It’s not a tragedy worth headlines—just one that repeats quietly in the background of otherwise normal days. Somehow, not speaking became ...

There’s a moment — sharp and sudden — when you realize the voice telling your story isn’t the hero, nor the villain. It’s the unreliable narrator, fumbling through the scenes, editing, omitting, dressing truths in pretty lies. Memory is a sly trickster, ego its loyal accomplice, weaving fiction where facts fail. You want coherence, meaning, a through-line, so your mind edits and colors outside the lines. That lost conversation? It never ended that way. That insult? Probably imagined. The pain? Reframed, softened, or amplified, depending on the day. We are artists of self-deception, and our brush strokes are bold and brazen, crafting mythologies out of mundane moments. Sometimes the lie is tender — a kindness toward the self, a survival tactic when the truth is too sharp to hold. Other times, it’s a mask so convincing even you believe it. The story we tell ourselves is less autobiography and more a shifting dreamscape — fluid, unstable, a kaleidoscope of who we were, are, and desperat...

I need to be careful. It’s strange how easily someone else's confusion can start to feel like my own, how their uncertainty can seep into my thoughts and make me question things that were once so clear. When they waver, I find myself slipping too, teetering on the edge of their indecision, wondering if maybe I’m the one who’s lost. Am I too much? Not enough? I keep asking myself these questions, knowing deep down that they weren’t mine to begin with. But here I am, letting their doubts crawl into my mind, letting their hesitation make me wonder if my worth is as fragile as their ability to see it. It’s like I’m standing in a fog that isn’t even mine, trying to find my footing on ground that’s been shaken by someone else’s storms.  There’s something deeply human in this tendency, isn’t there? This strange, almost instinctive drive to define ourselves through the eyes of others, to measure our worth by the scales of their perception. Maybe it’s rooted in our nature, this yearning for...

Strolling through our enchanted path, The righteous Heaven paid a visit, Descending from its huddled spot Misty Clouds! you won’t believe it. It’s just water floating in the air, I thought “Or Is it?” was my afterthought, The park was filled with laughing and giggling, From Kids playing, running and hiding. But to opportunists this fog means fortune Stalking walkers with evil intentions, To leap and attack when no one’s in sight, As a predator hunting its prey at night. A hazy fog caressing my cheeks, Admiring the beauty of this immaculate mist, Inspired by this vapor, I’ll last for a week, And think of the two souls who almost kissed!  Unobstructed vision is an impossibility, As perceptions create my reality, This fog, a being so profound Answers to what is it, is still unfound. …and hoping that it will never be found.

In the hushed solitude of night, under a sky punctuated by celestial wonders, I find myself contemplating the enigma of the moon’s dark side and the iceberg’s tip—the eternal symbols of the hidden and the revealed,  urging us to bridge the chasm between the visible and the concealed. You see, the moon presents to us only one face. The other side, the dark side, remains perpetually out of view, a silent expanse shrouded in mystery. It’s not merely a physical obscurity but a profound metaphor for the uncharted territories within us. This dark side is not just a void; it’s a space brimming with the shadows of our deepest fears, our unspoken desires, the parts of ourselves we keep hidden. It’s the silent echo of our inner worlds, unexamined and unspoken. In embracing this dark side, we confront the uncomfortable truths about ourselves. What lies in the far reaches of our inner moon? Perhaps it’s the grief we’ve buried, the dreams we’ve abandoned, the truths we dare not speak. This dark...

To find the vastness of a world contained within a grain of sand is to learn that meaning often lives in the smallest details—those fragments overlooked in the rush of everyday life. This truth asks us to slow down, to soften our gaze until the invisible becomes visible. “To see a world in a grain of sand,” Trust is never simple. It is a fragile negotiation between yearning and hesitation, a delicate dance where hope and doubt circle one another endlessly. Dreams may stretch high, aspiring toward the infinite, yet shadows of uncertainty pull them earthward, reminding us that progress is often tentative, fragile. “And heaven on a wild flower,” Connection is rare and wild, like a flower blooming unexpectedly in barren soil. It defies explanation and resists containment, thriving best when seen without judgment or expectation. In these moments of quiet encounter, the extraordinary quietly reveals itself. Our emotions are more than reactions; they are the outcome of what we choose to bel...

The reverie of walking – that state where one becomes preoccupied in thinking, an art of fleeing from reality towards a fantasy world created to escape the tragedies of this world. I admit that I cannot escape the harshness and stressful conditions of this reality, and that is the very reason why I choose to cling to this 5 minute walk to the 6th floor -  to this ‘fantasy’ world I created-  Sadly,  the finitude of the stairs makes me wish na sana, nasa 158th floor na lang yung classroom…  It’s in walking that I am lost in my thoughts and in my thought comes realization. A dangerous thing to some but through my realizations, I am able to contemplate and know why things ARE (as well as why things ARE NOT).  This catastrophic spectacle of life happens when I think I am quite certain of something but then I suddenly realize that the 'thing' I thought I already know is slowly escaping my grasp (which most of the time, would leave me hating my stupi...