Fragments of the Quiet Mind

No one warns you that choosing a toothbrush can feel like choosing a version of yourself. Aisle 7. Fluorescent lights. Hundreds of bristles staring back at you. Soft, medium, charcoal-infused, biodegradable. Every choice is a quiet manifesto: who you’ve been, who you’re becoming, who you quietly promised to be after your last breakdown. You don’t say this aloud, of course. You just stand there, pretending to read labels, but really you’re grieving something. Maybe time. We outgrow people the same way we outgrow objects — silently, then all at once. The old brush sits in your bathroom like a relic—worn out, bent at the neck, holding morning rituals and midnight guilt. Throwing it away feels cruel. Not because it’s useful, but because it knew you when you weren’t. It was there the morning after you said too much. The night you didn’t say enough. It held silence between your teeth. Even the most ordinary objects become archives when you’re paying attention. And this new one—this seem...

  Way back in college, I found myself drawn to book sales at Centermall, that old mall in Baguio with creaky floors and stubborn echoes. I’d roam those cramped aisles searching for something steady, something that might outlast me. But grief—grief rewrites the rules. It taught me that what I thought was permanent was never really mine to hold. When loss came, it didn’t just take someone from me. It tore apart the foundations I built around them—the coffee cups we shared, the songs that used to stitch moments together, the streets that once felt like home. Everything I thought was solid softened and shifted beneath my feet. I realized memory isn’t a monument; it’s water—always flowing, impossible to grip. The silence after the calls stopped was the first crack. It wasn’t just absence; it was a rupture in my story. Grief isn’t a moment—it’s a slow dismantling of certainty. The past I trusted became a stranger, and I had to learn how to live with someone who knew me less than I thou...

Monday mornings feel like waking up in the aftermath of something unspeakable. The alarm goes off—not like a gentle chime, but more like a siren dragging you out of some place deeper than sleep. You don’t wake up so much as surface, disoriented, the bed a kind of shipwreck you were clinging to all night. The sheets are twisted like torn sails. Your body, waterlogged with dreams and dread, doesn't move. Not yet. It’s not just fatigue. There’s a kind of existential drag, as if the very structure of the week is built to resist your being. You stare at the ceiling like it might offer a reason to rise. None comes. The world beyond the blanket is already demanding something from you—your time, your answers, your alignment with a schedule you didn’t invent but are somehow bound to. The idea that Monday is a “fresh start” feels like a corporate myth. Nothing about it is fresh. What you feel is continuity—the heavy kind. Everything you didn’t finish last week is still there, waiting, as if...

  While cleaning out the garage, sifting through the debris of forgotten years, I found an old photograph tucked into a small box, yellowed at the edges, stubborn against the dust. I knew it before I even looked — the weight of it humming in my hands. A snapshot of a boy I barely recognize now: hair a little wild, a smile a little too sure, eyes chasing something just beyond the frame as if he believed the world would always wait for him. I wonder what he knew back then — or what he hadn't yet learned. How many choices still lay untouched before him, how many hearts would be gathered and dropped along the way, how many nights would stretch endlessly beneath a sky too wide to hold all the questions that would come. A boy smiling without knowing the cost of wonder. A boy chasing after futures that would later burn themselves down to ash. I am not haunted by what he hoped for — I am haunted by the purity of his not-knowing. Sometimes, I envy him — the unbroken faith he carried...

Time moved in silence, ten years slipped past, Yet the essence endures, a message to last. Like shadows that dance in the moon’s soft glow, A presence lingers, deep and slow. In memory’s halls, where echoes swell, Laughter lingers, a haunting spell. Each moment shared, a universe spun, In the depths of silence, two souls were one. Through philosophy’s maze, they boldly tread, Seeking truths in chaos, where dreams bled. A decade’s journey, the bond still tight, In the cosmic dance, a promise alight. The Cheshire’s grin, with mystery’s gleam, Reflects bliss in a timeless dream. In the stars’ grand symphony, their tale’s unfurled, Lost in the cosmos, as time’s wheel swirled. Existence’s beauty, a fleeting sight, In eternity’s abyss, their essence alight. Though time may falter, and distance betray, A light in the soul will forever stay. As galaxies clash and constellations sway, Their connection endures, beyond decay. In the depths of forever, beyond night and day, They’ll find their path...

I sat alone on the worn couch, remote in hand, staring at the familiar opening credits of a show I once watched every week like it was a lifeline. Tonight, the laughter felt hollow, the jokes like whispers from someone else’s life. I wasn’t here to be entertained—I was here to visit an old version of myself, the one who believed this story held answers. Rewatching a show I’ve outgrown isn’t about reclaiming warmth or comfort. It’s about tracing the slow unraveling of who I used to be, like sifting through dust-covered photographs. The characters haven’t changed, but my gaze has—older, wearier, carrying the weight of roads taken and roads abandoned. Sometimes, growing up feels less like moving forward and more like leaving behind a self who was never fully ready to leave. There’s a strange grief in watching those scenes again—not for the story itself, but for the self who once saw herself reflected in it. We return not to revive but to mourn, to honor the ghost of who we were before g...

Time moves with a relentless rhythm, An unyielding current, quietly pulling me through the sands of time.  I often hear that life is fleeting, that moments slip away faster than I can grasp them, but there’s a deeper truth to this: it’s not just that time passes—it’s that I change with it, and with each passing second, I’m forced to reckon with who I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming. What is it about time that feels so heavy? Perhaps it’s the realization that I can never truly hold onto a moment. I cling to the idea of the present, as if it could last forever, but it drifts like sand, slipping through my fingers. I spend my life trying to capture it, trying to freeze it in place. Yet, the more I try to keep time still, the more it eludes me. I’m never quite here; I’m always a step ahead or a step behind, forever chasing a future I can never fully reach, and a past that keeps fading into memory. And still, there is something beautiful in that struggle. Time teaches me to app...

Some days don’t arrive. They repeat . Like the ghost of a bell you’re not sure you heard, but still check the window for. You wake up, and the sky is already tired. The clock ticks not forward, but sideways . You open your inbox and find nothing but yesterday trying to start a conversation. There is coffee, but it tastes like memory. There is noise, but it hums in the key of gone. And somewhere in that long stretch of artificial light and recycled air, you think of someone. Or no one. Or someone who used to be no one until their absence took shape. You wonder— Did they ever sit in a day like this, where everything feels like it’s happened already, but differently? Would they remember you, not in the headline moments, but in the filler scenes— the hallway pause, the lunch alone, the rain that didn’t quite fall? Maybe you were just a whisper in the acoustics of their life. Still, whispers carry when the world is quiet enough.

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 always starts the same: light through blinds, the click of the kettle, the soft groan of plumbing. You don’t realize you’re building a ritual until the ritual disappears. Then suddenly, the absence has shape. My old apartment had a window that faced nothing special—just a brick wall, faded graffiti, a stubborn weed that grew through concrete. I used to stare at it while waiting for the toaster to pop. I never thought I’d miss that view. But now, it visits me uninvited. In sterile hotel rooms. In the blur between meetings. In the quiet moments before a notification chimes. We think we miss people or places. Sometimes, what we miss is the version of ourselves that existed in those hours we never thought to notice. Mornings are forgettable by design. They're repetition, maintenance, routine. But there's something sacred in their silence. The way the world is half-asleep, and so are you. No performance yet. No crisis. Just the click of a spoon against ceramic and the low hum ...

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...

I saw her on the escalator. She was coming down as I was going up. That small, cinematic distance—just enough time to recognize, remember, and rehearse a lifetime in the space between two floors. Her hair was shorter now, the shade lighter, like the kind of choice you make after surviving something no one clapped for. She looked firmer in the shoulders, like she'd learned how to carry herself after being dropped too many times. More put-together. Less hesitant. But her eyes still had that old flicker—like she could still vanish into her own head mid-conversation. She was with someone. Maybe a partner. Maybe someone passing through. He had the look of someone she trusted with silence. The kind of man who didn’t ask her to shrink her dreams to fit a dinner conversation. I watched him lean in, say something only meant for her. She laughed, and it was soft, real, clean—like she no longer had to apologize for her joy. Then she saw me. Just a second too soon. Her expression shifte...

 I found an old notebook tucked away in a drawer, its pages filled with half-written letters and unfinished plans. Names I almost called, places I almost went, dreams I almost chased. The weight of those almosts hit me like a cold wave—ghosts of what could have been, pressing heavy on my chest. Almost is the ache of standing at a door, hand raised, and pulling away at the last moment. It’s the sound of footsteps fading before they ever reached you, the glance that didn’t meet your eyes long enough to matter. These almosts aren’t just missed chances—they’re fragments of a life that teased itself into existence but never quite formed. There’s a peculiar grief in mourning what was never fully real. The almosts live in liminal spaces—between hope and regret, desire and denial. They haunt the edges of memory like shadows that refuse to vanish, reminding us how close we’ve come to something meaningful, yet how far we remain. What do we do with these echoes? How do we carry the ache wi...

There’s something sacred about revisiting old wounds, an ineffable truth to the passage of time that allows one to see what once was with a clearer, more tender eye. It’s been seven years since I last stood in these familiar hallways, and yet the sense of familiarity lingers as if time has frozen. But this return is not the reunion I imagined—it is instead marked by sorrow, filled with the chaotic rush of emotions as I navigate the corridors of memory and present. I had returned to this place for a reason I never thought I would—a hospital visit for my father, a moment that grounds me in a very different reality than the one I once inhabited. The school that nurtured my idealism now feels like a relic, a reminder of who I was—a young teacher still struggling to make sense of myself, my ideals, and my failures. I had come to this school as a fresh, wide-eyed soul with unshakable principles and an unwavering optimism, but life, as it often does, chipped away at the fortress of idealism...

"Hollow Life" Beating the fall I can’t help but desire of falling down this time Deep in this hole of my making I can't escape Falling all this time We come to this place Falling through time  Living a hollow life Always we're taking Waiting for signs Hollow lives... Fearing to fall and  Still the ground below me calls Falling down this time Ripping apart all  These things I have tried to stop Falling all this time Is there ever any wonder why we look to the sky? Search in vain? Asking why? All alone? Where is God? Looking down? We don’t know? We fall in space,  We can't look down, Death may come  Peace I have found What to say?  Am I alive,  Am I asleep?  Or have I died? (Wanting Peace) We fall in space (Wanting Peace) We can't look down, Death may come, (Something takes a hold of me) Peace I have found  (Something takes a hold of me) I want ...

We live as if endings are always signs of failure. As if something must be broken for the door to close, the chapter to end, the thread to unravel. But sometimes, things don’t end because they’ve fallen apart. They end because they’ve simply... faded.  Fading doesn’t need fixing. It’s not a flaw in the design of the universe—it’s just a shift in the seasons. Some things are meant to exist only for a time. They come to you like light from a distant star, bright and warm, but you can’t hold it forever. You can only bask in it while it’s here. We fear the end, don’t we? The clean break that leaves us standing in the aftermath, wondering what we missed. But maybe it’s not about what we missed. Maybe it’s about what we gained in the process of letting go. Not everything that fades is lost. Not everything that ends is broken. Some things end because they’ve already given us what they came to give. And that’s enough. We hold on too tightly to moments, people, dreams, as if by sheer forc...

E very second, every minute, T hinking makes me break my wit. E very hour, Every day, R emembering leaves me disarray. N o one can escape the curse of time, I nfinitesimal memories resonate in chime. T he thing that makes a painstaking forever, Y ou and me, for eternity, can never be together.

When we finally accept the fact that our lives are fleeting – everything ends… As nihilistic as it may sound, we are all subjects to the hour glass of time. The whole ordeal may seem unbearable and “un-romantic” but having an illusion of eternity provides us with nothing more than pseudo-ideals. Eternity isn’t a mechanical process quantified by time. Time isn’t the ticking of the clock, not the hour, nor the days but time is a living present.   We have to do away with our romantic designs of eternity – We want affirmation that our partners will love us forever, we want confirmation from people that everything’s going to be fine, we want to live with our loved ones for all eternity… But all of these are deceptions we tell ourselves for we cannot carry the burden of being trapped in time. Accept the idea that we are temporal beings. Our chronological limitation is what makes sense in this seemingly absurd world, but this limitation doesn’t mean that we cannot immort...

There’s a kind of quiet violence in nostalgia. It doesn’t hit you all at once—it slips in gently, like the softest of whispers, and before you know it, you're drowning in it. The past, once a source of comfort, becomes a place you can never return to. And yet, you keep going back, searching for something you can never hold again. How strange it is, that the very memories that once warmed us, now tear at us with a tenderness we don’t know how to escape. We remember those moments with a bittersweet ache—those sunlit afternoons, those laughs shared like nothing could ever hurt us. Back when the world was wide, and we were still so sure. But with every recollection, there’s a sting. A reminder that those days are gone, and we are not who we were. That somehow, even the most beautiful moments can become burdens. The beauty of the past becomes a shadow, pulling us back, trapping us in a version of ourselves that no longer exists. It’s not that we regret those days. No, we cherish th...

Goodbyes are rarely the dramatic moments we imagine. We think they’ll be loud—final, decisive, with all the weight of an ending hanging in the air. But in reality, goodbyes often take their time, slipping in quietly, unnoticed until they’ve already happened. It’s never one single moment, but a slow withdrawal, a gradual absence. The first missed text doesn’t feel like much. The second time they cancel plans doesn’t seem like a signal. But over time, these small moments accumulate, and one day you realize they’ve stopped calling, stopped reaching out. You don’t know when it happened exactly—just that it did. It’s a strange thing, how people can disappear without making a sound. You can still see their name on your phone, hear their voice in your head, but in the space between you, there’s a silence that didn’t exist before. It's not an ending. It’s a slow, deliberate pulling away—one step at a time, until there’s a distance too great to bridge. Some goodbyes don’t shout. They’re ...