/// praha

time stretches to eternity here. i was really confused if i had breakfast at cafe louvre today... or was it a day ago? while walking down the streets, i catch myself thinking: where am i again? brussels? paris? and then, it comes back. i'm in prague.

everything reminds me of mordor: a fairy-tale mordor where a good sauron of white light reigns. flowing robes, melancholy statues, menacing spires, a long white hall, a pink and gold sunset. an old square with ten thousand competing beautiful details all at once. 

i ate my way across this golden city: breakfast at cafe louvre. pancakes with hot raspberries and sour cream, omelettes and summer iced tea. a coke and a kellogs bar while standing outside the cathedral (a.k.a. gondor), lunch at bar bar. a beef skewer with potatoes and cream, coke, iced tea. dinner at louvre again: chicken breast with ham, potatoes and tomatoes. two summer iced teas, strawberries and lime ice cream. mmm

and becoming melancholy when i saw a creditrans card. it's only been a day, but it feels like something that happened so far away. to realize only when you're away: it has been home. 

to cross white bridges with you. to sit in parks and wallow in the sun. the third floor of the library. to ride the metro to casco viejo, the anticipation. to feel so much, and not have enough (time?) (courage?) to write. to make it last forever. is it possible?  

always towards the end. to let myself go and stop making sense of everything. 

you are my big, big prize at the end of the struggle! who knew?

to go home and stand still and breathe. 

to see you again! to feel, to seize, to let it flow.

/// lo bueno nunca acaba si hay algo que te lo recuerda

plentzia, 18:30. the last time i will see the sea of cantabria for a long time. alternating wind, sun, shade, dusk, sea diamonds. we listened to lali puna's faking the books as i breathed in the sea air. and i felt it again, just like how it felt like in zambales... wrapped all together in one gulp of air: magic and love and dreams and wishing and knowing that everything is as it should be and that everything else that will follow will also be like that. breathe in and out: wish for love, and love will be given to you. 

i'm going to seize this. i'm going to live inside, over and all throughout these moments. this is my life, now, and i am happy. i love you, you, you. i love you bilbao, i love you manila, i love you stockholm, and i love you whatever place is coming for me next.  because i've learned (FINALLY) that i could be happy ANYWHERE. you thought you could only be happy in this one square meter of space, only to realize that it unfolds and stretches and extends itself to an unknown limit: happiness knows no bounds. especially not geographic. INSANE! i had to go through some difficult things to realize that, and i was lucky enough to bump into super wonderful surprises along the way. could you run into could you run into could you go and run into me?

(see, i had to study euroculture! i had to suffer for my papers and presentations! otherwise there would be no reason to go to the library. :)

"lo bueno nunca acaba si hay algo que te lo recuerda" says the spanish beer commercial with the swedish band playing in the music video. "the good times never end if there is something to remember it." and i have, like fifty!

i have polaroids: arrate looking like pop-eye, simon screaming through that orange pedestrian cone thing at zubizuri, b doing handstands like always. i have that toy truck we picked up that last night in artxanda. the cocktail mixer that you saved for me at the sheraton. a tissue paper from a bar in mundaka, my favorite, glorious weekend. a cd. i could save smells too: the smell of sunscreen, of muesli in the morning, of black t-shirts. the smell of grass mixed with bloc party and fleet foxes. i have infinite hours of songs. i have all these words, words that don't always seem to capture what i have exactly felt and seen... and if all these is not enough, i will always have you. and i will carry you in my heart wherever i may go.

this is the struggle: to never forget and always remember. 

long live our days in bilbao!

/// ana

She hugged me at the wooden stairs, the same wooden stairs where I used to ran up these past months trying to make it in time for Pilar's 11 am class. "I will be here for you even if you already have children and you will need psychotheraphy!" I could see that she was trying hard not to cry. "I know we will see each other again, I can feel it," I said, like I always say when I have to leave people I love the most.  "And if not, I will always be here for you," she said to me. And then, I understood. 

I remember Casco Viejo last Saturday night, walking with B home. "That's how you say good bye," he said.

/// tonight tonight tonight i want to be with you tonight

swedish music, spanish love. 

lo bueno nunca acaba 

si hay algo que te lo recuerda.

/// the joy of less

I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.”

 I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

Pico Iyer - The Joy of Less

/// b and the blowfish

/// there is a light that never goes out

lagi mong iniisip na tapos na eh di pa naman tapos! nanood ako ng gossip girl kahapon tapos naisip ko swak talaga yung last scene when blair waldorf said: this is all i have been dreaming of, but why am i sad? why are you talking in the past tense? we are still here! this night feels like a memory already. just hold me and let's not waste time talking about it.

story of my life! 

if it's really important, they will stay with you wherever you may go. i will carry you in my heart. long live our days in bilbao! a place that will be magical forever. we pack our bags, we leave for other places, but bilbao and memories and. plus i have the polaroids to remind me that everything is real.

i remember singing "EVERYTHING WILL CHANGE." before leaving germany and moving here. and everything really did. it's insane how things turned around. 

strange things will happen. 

b as someone to look up to. always going onward, living life as it should be. "that's how you say good bye." "let's go to france!" and he says he feels like his life is drifting away. if only he knows how i could see him, and his sparkling shimmering life so clearly: shining in the sun, lying on the grass, taking it all in, riding the waves. never afraid and always open to everything that life gives him. he's like a walking phoenix song. i'm so happy we ran into each other. 

think less and see it grow! like a riot! like a riot! oh!

/// too good

I burst into tears the moment their car turned round the corner and I stepped into their empty apartment. "It has been too good, wasn't it?" Aislin said as she gave me a big hug. 

Everything is just as they should be and it could not have been any better. And for that, there is no reason to be sad. Like a Phoenix set, there is no room for tears and sadness: this is life. As it should be. Comings, goings, and moments where the word "forever" exist.  

Melancholy.

/// hustle rose

we are in arrate's house right now. planning the 80s party we're going to have at the dutch palace, sharing parallel but distant memories of metric's hustle rose. four years ago, i was walking down  hong kong's neon-lit streets, thinking of disneyland and far-away loves. arrate, listening to the same song, was playing world of war craft, riding a horse and enjoying the beginnings of a new life. and now, we are here. 

four years from now, who knows where we will be? all i know is that i'm glad that i am here. listening to shimmering songs, building friendships, just being here. and knowing that nothing will be lost. if songs find their way across continents, then imagine what friends can do.

*** frapee black and chocolate cake

Hej! It's Arrate speaking. Angel is too lazy to write anything now. And she's also too busy eating and covering her teeth with chocolate. Phillypijnan style (-> I'm leaving it that way)

She's also embarrassing me all day - probably not new for any of you, dear readers. Screaming and jumping and laughing and repeating loudly Spanish expressions in front of the people who say them (e.g. Coffee Break cashiers or comic book shop owners).

She just told me she loves the Basque tissues that say "Eskerrik asko etortzeagatik" (Thank you for coming), which is by the way what I'll tell her when she leaves the country.

Now that she's not watching, let me tell you one thing. Bilbao would have been so many hundreds of times more boring and horrible if she had not shown up. She thinks the Basque Country is green and awesome. Well, it's green. But a great part of the awesomeness vanishes when the awesome people leave it.

I'm talking silly now. So I'll leave now, and finish my piece of cake.

Honoured to be your guest blogger.

/// those to come

/// (click to view large)///

///the good times are always now and yet to come! ///

///Quaking leaves and broken light
Shifting skin
The coming night
The bearers of all good things arrive
Climb inside us
Twist and cry
A kiss on your molten eyes
Myriad lives
Like blades of grass
Yet to be realized///

/// i'm high enough from all the waiting / to ride a wave on your inhaling

i'm thinking of you and the smell of sunscreen. and the sheraton on a monday night. pilots and zombie streets. electric feel in the air, as if something big is about to happen. ice cream and stories of barcelona. beach day and noisy people in the metro. vodka lemons and piggy back rides. fuzzy sparkling nights. half of nightmare before christmas and falling asleep on your shoulder. melancholy walks to the bus stop. colacao's, sissy teas and being fourteen again. do you want to hear it? the smell of sunscreen.

/// friday

/// but i have a scholarship. ///

i took lots of polaroids that night and was filled with this giddy happiness you get after finishing a big paper. it's not so much from finishing the paper as from knowing the fact that i can do something that i thought i couldn't: cramming. haha feels like winning a race or something! INSANE!

love stories in stromboli and dancing to the strokes in azkena and hanging out in a gay bar. bumping into the euroculture people and canary bird and galadriel. being carried on arrate's back, running in the rain. we were reciting lord of the rings in spanish again, this time it was galadriel and samwise gamgee. 

i took a picture and everyone was filled with giddy happiness as they saw the film come out and the photo slowly appear in front of their eyes. white and then blue and then a burst of colour. arrate shook my arm and exclaimed, "ANGEL!!! DON'T LEAVE!!!"

i won't. no way. we will all stay in these fuzzy sparkling moments forever.

/// we make a pah-ty, we go to portugal(ete). NAT!!!

because my number 1 dutch is not around, i had to suffice to hanging out with number 2. haha saint simon and i went to portugal(ete) today. the basque country is killing me with its beauty. death and hypochondria were the subjects of the day. and also, divorce. haha it sounds so grim, but we were just laughing all the time. i saw the highest bridge i've ever seen, prettier than the eiffel tower. there was the sea, and the cranes that i love so much. the cranes in pais vasco are like dinosaurs don't you think? in sweden, they are more like T's. there was a street with portugal-in-my-mind, a cable crossing ride where the creditrans work, crazy screaming kids dressed for a wedding with a weird mickey mouse babysitter and a GASTRONOMY FAIR with lots of cookies!!! "do you eat 23 hours per day?"

i can't believe people swarm all over rome, barcelona and paris when you have this... middle-earth place. and maybe it's a good thing that they don't know about it. more space for me and the dutch and the basques to make a pah-ty! germans say make, dutch say build! let's build a party! NOT!

good times just continue and continue and continue. this is not good bye. i will carry you in my heart wherever i may go.

and we will live!

/// without you it's just _ilbao.

come back soon b! :)

/// from my spiritual adviser K

"Don't put all your eggs in one basket" is a idiomatic phrase meaning that one should not focus all one's resources on one hope, possibility or avenue of success.

/// the sheraton

it was the longest ride ever from san inazio metro to casco viejo. how could 7 stops feel like an eternity?
listening to phoenix's 1901 and savoring the build up, the shimmering guitars that just wouldn't stop.
i would like to think that good times SUCH AS THIS is something similar: still happening, still happening, still happening!
and then, i ran to the exit because it just didn't feel right just walking when you are this happy and this excited.
and then, there you are!

ice cream, pretending to be swedish, no sense of humor and no sense of style.
and telling everything about barcelona and feeling the overwhelming tension go away
as words and words and words poured out from me to you.
and feelings and fears.
and "angel, you shouldn't be afraid all the time."

a positive tension in the air
knowing that something really big is about to happen
an electric feel in the air
just the moment before zombies attack or the dead rise from the grave
or when you're about to fall in love.

and then, going into an alternate world
where only you, me and visions of swimming pools and vodka lemons exist.
and then, your hands.
and then, the taxi whisked me away.
and then, i couldn't sleep at all.

if only i could live forever in fuzzy, sparkling nights such as this.

/// CRAI RIFRIZENT!

/// this is how we (roll) study. ///

/// and i'll be anything you ask and more. going hej hej hej hej hej!

i am falling in love with many and new things, places, moments and people right now. <3 life is good.