Fragments of the Quiet Mind

There you were again. Bittersweet. Mysterious. Smelling faintly of burnt hope and toasted almonds. I couldn’t place you, but somehow I already missed you. You arrived on a Tuesday — not a remarkable Tuesday, mind you. Just one of those limp, mid-tempo days that smelled faintly of budget cuts and existential dread. I found you sitting there, steam spiraling like a secret trying to escape, whispering things to my tired soul like: "You’ll survive this spreadsheet." "You are more than your inbox." "The meeting could’ve been an email." Was it your warmth that unraveled the corners of my anxiety? Or your bitterness — so artfully balanced, like heartbreak in a tuxedo? Loving you felt oddly familiar, like recognizing a skyline you’ve only ever seen in a dream. Or a crush on someone who doesn't exist — but has a Spotify playlist somehow eerily aligned with your breakup mood. I started timing my mornings around you. Measured my sanity by your pre...

In the realm of philosophical inquiry, few assertions resonate with the clarity of Ludwig Wittgenstein's declaration: "The world is the totality of facts, not of things." This profound assertion, nestled within the folds of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , offers a conceptual canvas upon which the nature of reality is painted not with the brushstrokes of material objects, but with the intricate details of facts. Wittgenstein’s perspective demands that we shift from our habitual focus on objects—those tangible entities that populate our everyday experience—to the abstract yet substantive realm of facts. Facts, in this context, are the building blocks of reality, serving as the true currency of our existential ledger. Consider the world as an endless symphony, where each note is a fact, and the harmonious interplay of these notes constructs the entire score of our understanding. To perceive the world solely through the lens of objects is akin to hearing only ...

May bahid kabaliwang pumapasok sa isipan sa tuwing ang tulog sa gabi ay di nakakamit.  Madalas, inaalala ang napanaginipan sa katatapos na gabi habang pinapakiramdaman ang malamyang ihip ng hangin na dumadampi sa mga pisngi. Di maiiwasan na ang kaabikat nito ay ang kalungkutang makikita sa mahinahong sayaw ng mga dahon sa awiting mapangaraping kaluluwa lang ang nakakasaksi. Sa pangarap sila’y padipang naipako –Pilit inaabot ang panaginip subalit lumulutang sa kawalan ang pag-asang masilayan pa ito… dahil sa pangangarap, pikit kanilang mga mata. Sa pagkakapikit, idinuduyan sila palayo sa realidad at patungo sa kapayapaang dulot ng kahimbingan… Kabaliwan… At lango sa katahimikang Kadiliman lang ang makapag bibigay.

I never really liked commuting although I enjoy travelling. It’s weird, but what I mean by this is that, I don’t like the feeling of being inside of something. Enclosed, bounded and not doing anything – the feeling of being static while the world around you is moving. It’s not the speed, it’s the feeling of being able to go somewhere or achieve something without you exerting any effort but still getting that which you want to get.  It’s how I feel when I'm commuting, I just sit there then the next thing you know, you are already at your destination. What’s more than this perverted idea is perhaps because of this certain irrational fear that’s building up inside me whenever I’m inside a car, jeep, taxi or a van.  The stillness of the air inside the vehicle creates the very ground for my paranoid thoughts to germinate and breed. I find enclosed spaces fettering, but no, it’s not claustrophobia (because I don’t have issues with elevators), it’s just that riding makes me feel ir...

Even the moon, in its pale brilliance, hangs distant in the night, a beacon for all those who have ever reached out and found only the cool, indifferent void between them. It watches silently as we spin, caught between the fragile hope that one day we might touch the unreachable and the bitter wisdom that our longing is bound to remain unfulfilled. There’s a strange kind of beauty in this distance, an unspoken harmony between the ache of yearning and the starkness of reality. And perhaps it is in this gap, between desire and the understanding that it may never be met, that the truest part of us is revealed. In this silence, we learn not only the shape of our dreams but the contours of our limitations. The moon, too, is a mirror of sorts—reflecting not what we have, but what we wish we could become, the version of ourselves that is somehow both close and unreachable. I think about vulnerability in these moments. How we stretch, reaching outward, hoping someone or something will bridg...

The truth is not hidden in the fleeting smiles we chase, but in the stillness that comes with truly seeing. And in that seeing, we become more than content—we become awake, truly alive. The clarity we seek does not promise comfort or ease; it is sharp, cutting through the veil of what we believe we need. In that sharpness, we are forced to confront the weight of our existence, the choices we have made, and the ones still waiting for us. Clarity doesn’t whisper; it roars with a quiet intensity, breaking us open. It reveals the lies we tell ourselves, the excuses that hold us captive, and the dreams that were never ours to begin with. And in that brutal revelation, there is freedom. Because once we see, we cannot unsee. And when we stop chasing happiness, we finally start to live the lives we were meant to, not in pursuit of joy, but in pursuit of the truth that makes joy irrelevant. In the end,  clarity isn’t a destination; it’s a radical transformation that leaves nothing untouch...

  They say to wake is to step into chaos. To exist, not merely to be. But what of those who remain cradled in the safety of sleep, lost to the quiet hum of dreams, untouched by the gnawing of truth? In a world that insists on slumber, wakefulness becomes a rebellion. To truly see is to confront the unbearable weight of reality — and few dare carry it. Most would rather fade into the comfort of illusion, where the world bends to the sweetness of their fantasies. But to be awake, to shake free from the shackles of the false comfort, is to become a stranger to the familiar. A wanderer in a land that asks for blindness and docility. The conflict lies in the tension: the dreaming world versus the one that burns with raw, unfiltered life. The soul, awake, is a battlefield. Each moment of clarity a war against the numbness. Each step forward a rejection of the lullaby that seeks to lull us back to sleep. This is the paradox of wakefulness. The more we see, the less we are understood. Th...

I have to argue – regardless of the fact that my friend don’t want to. I need it – thoughts flowing once more. Anyway, our entire argument went haywire: from the blessedness of Sundays, to the idea of immortality and we ended up with hermeneutics and the problem/ingenuity of deconstruction in interpretations (despite of an ant falling in my coffee cup and throwing it away, going back to the kitchen and making another brew – but this is not part of the topic: I just cant help saying it.) Ok. Side comments away. We were chatting about the impossibility of a purely objective interpretation: as she was pointing out that the boundaries and limitations of language is what defines reality. Without which, we will be having fleeting meanings, and not holding on to any concept but pure abstraction of things – to which I categorically interpreted as descent to an ‘unreal’ world. While the chat was ongoing, I was getting bored about her mumblings and so I started watching the “matrix ...

Behind the mask lies a magnanimous battle between the self and the illusory projection one portrays. Usually, the self gives in, conditioned to believe in the phantasmal personality projected. The projection then crosses the boundaries of fantasy and reality, making the illusion appear’ real’ and when the self suddenly realizes he is being eaten up and decides to remove the mask, it’s already adhered to his face, it’s a part of him – the mask becomes him. The pain is excruciating.  In removing the mask it’s inevitable that the face will also be affected Surgical scalpels, blades and knives will be used… and upon doing the task, You are left faceless, No personality, No identity, oblivious of who you are, you become - Nothing…

What if the universe is just one giant thought — like that embarrassing moment you had years ago that suddenly crashes back into your mind at 3 AM, uninvited and vivid, leaving you desperate to forget? It’s a cosmic thought, sprawling yet fragile, teetering on the edge of memory and oblivion. Maybe existence itself is a fleeting spark in a mind so vast, overwhelmed by the sheer weight of its own reflection. The stars, those ancient witnesses, might just be neurons firing in an endless dream, a pattern trying to make sense of its own chaos. Black holes? Not devouring matter but swallowing meaning — the universe’s own way of erasing parts of itself it can’t bear to face. We think we live in a place of permanence, but what if permanence is just the illusion of a thought clinging to its last thread? Time stretches like a fading echo, and reality flickers like a candle in a drafty room, trying to hold on to a story that’s slipping away. In this vast forgetfulness, we’re both the unive...

Am I crazy? Probably. Mad for hunting happiness like a ghost in a hall of mirrors. Lunatic, fixated on the moon—this divine itch I can’t scratch. Crazy enough to enter the labyrinth knowing every turn tightens the noose, knowing the path back is steeper, darker, more broken. Yet this place — my fractured kingdom — is brutal, raw, and utterly beautiful. So damn beautiful it makes logic seem like exile. I built this asylum and it hums with a strange stillness, a playground of beasts, shadows, and myth, and somehow I belong, like a relic resurfaced from another lifetime. I want this rabbit hole to be the real escape. That the Mad Hatter and White Rabbit aren’t just fantasies, that waking up isn’t the cruelest plot twist. Sometimes I think sleep is the real world— where conversations unravel freely from physics to philosophy, where masks drop, where I’m stripped of pretense. This place alone feels like home. The labyrinth is a puzzle—harsh, complex, relentless— I stumble, fall, rise, ...

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.

There are moments when we realize that the things we’ve done in the past were better left undone, words left unsaid, thoughts better kept in our brains, and emotions that should’ve stayed in that dark and hollow part of our souls. It would’ve been more favorable if it were as such,  rather than leave us in disarray and turmoil.    In your damnation, you think of the hurt,  and think of the depression,  and finally,  just think. The curse of the thinker is that everything appears to be ambiguous,  making everything as a conundrum to be solved.  He gets so engrossed with his ideas that sometimes,  he cannot identify what is real from what is not.  Making sense about almost everything, but few people understands him. The curse of the dreamer is that, there will come a time when they have to wake up from their slumber,  a juncture where hope is abandoned and be ensnared by the idea that dreams never really happen. Inevitably, the light ...

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...

I'm really not into waiting... in fact, i detest it. At this moment, i am waiting for the rain to stop (because i'm too vain to bring my umbrella when i left the house this morning. I kinda thought that my my prophetic prowess can control the weather.) As I gaze at unfamiliar faces, it's kinda silly how they attempt to run through the rain when in fact, it's futile to brave this kind of weather. People rushing to go home, all too busy with their matters-of-consequences...  Pitying these people as i try to Justify the Cartesian idea that these people are engrossed with nothing but metaphysical illusions of reality. Do their matters of consequences really matter? The heck...agawid ak ketdin.