Dreck

dante quintana

ADHD: ATTENTION DETRIMENTAL TO HOME DISCOVERY

I like to focus now on the chair, the soft receptivity of this reclining couch that probably cost my dad a lot. My dad splurges now, when he feels he should. His young self would be proud. But will his young self approve of his cheating? I'm not sure. I like to focus on the way my fingers hit the keyboard; it resembles the feeling of a toddler being cradled in a repetitive manner, so that she may easily sleep. Or the meditative monk who concentrates his attention on his alternating legs as he walks. Or a teenage boy in baggy jeans, skating around the city at midnight, lost in the trance of his fast instinctive pushing movements.

I still believe. I still hope. Dream. Pray. I am as in love as I have always been with the faceless woman in my dreams. But I realize she is not merely Everything, not merely transcendental and all-encompassing. She might not even be a she, and I am terrified of getting her wrong. But this lamp that stands beside me -- taller than most lamps I know, if it even is called a lamp or some other name for artificial light -- that peeks over my shoulder, trying to read this humble yet ambitious entry, I have figured, deserves my acknowledgement, my focus. Its ability to pair well with this prestigious and welcoming chair deserves my focus. I realize something new. The universal interconnectedness and chaos I so love speaking of -- it has another face I have long ignored. But which at a point in my life, in its raw and blossoming stages, was all I knew: the comfort of this chair, coinciding with the unspeakable sensation that arises from my 40th floor view of Manila. Of my sleeping mother, at the sala of our tiny condo unit, who was, is, and will always be the center of my sorrow and joy. And oddly, of my phlegm-filled lungs and mucus-filled nose, which has shown me Life since the beginning of my consciousness. It all comes back, in the manner of the Filipino's cyclic metaphysics, our Gulong na Palad.

I am unsure about the personal Bathala, whether they outweigh the all-encompassing disinterested One of other cultures. But the ice-cold relaxing tears that are awaiting me when I go up to bed, the silent darkness, the petite murmurs of the aircon, the embrace of my pink Hello Kitty sheets, and the pillow that has seen the most hidden parts of my scalp; they tell me that maybe I should stay a bit more. Stay for a few more days, or weeks, below the shifting, and the raging, and the blinding light of the sky. They whisper that maybe home is not a Garden somewhere waiting to be found, but the couple of rooms that have already heard my snores, my burps, and my singa.



Dante Quintana is the pen name of Danah Sampaga, an undergraduate student taking up a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy in De La Salle University (DLSU)-Manila. They are a member of the Poetry section in Malate Literary Folio and currently the Assistant Vice President of Academics of Samahan ng mga Lasalyanong Pilosopo (PILOSOPO). The pursuit of learning about the human experience is what serves as the heart of both their philosophical and literary interests.