Beauty and Madness

An hour and a half…

Of doing nothing but tinker with the latest apps in my iPhone while sipping a cup of Starbucks iced mocha is quite boring. Passing the time in a corner chair, while trying to be unobtrusive as one could be was never easy in a very busy café especially if it’s the favorite hangout of half the people who you deal with in the workplace everyday.

She’s late again. Promises are really made to be broken. And old habits certainly die hard. But this time, enough is enough. I’m fed up and I’m mad as hell.

Makati is hell at this time of the year; Hot and sticky, polluted and dirty, noisy and ugly. This urban jungle in the middle of what has been a mosquito infested swamp before they were reclaimed by the old rich that owns much of the land has long been my favorite playground.

Makati has been synonymous with the best days of my life: Of care-free days and tranquil nights; of raging adventures and mindless tortures; of the beauty and the beast inside me…

Yes, I’m back in the hunt again trying to recapture those days when I was the king of the world. It’s been a year since I last venture into the abyss of my existence. I thought I was through walking into that dark road less traveled.

But was I wrong. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel but only darkness. Darkness that I need to groped for a rope to find my way out. And then I saw the light.

I realized that I was in my room and the golden rays that passed through the curtains which warmly tickled my skin were from a solitary incandescent lamp hanging from above.

And behind the curtains, I saw my dear old Myla-- suspended in mid-air, swaying from side to side, her bulging eyes looking but not seeing through me, her purple tongue sticking out in a facial grimace that is both beautiful and ugly.