
Hi, I’m Brian Dys — a photographer from the inside looking out · a composer entangled in electronic music · a UX designer · a spouse, a parent, & everything in between.
They call her that. Stiffany. Like a cross between Stephanie and Tiffany. Her teeth protrude out of her lips and almost she could have been born to peck her food.
But she is human. A being with some hopes and some dreams. Unlike other species – human or in- – they only exist, they thrive, survive day in and out.
Not her the least. She acts on these hopes and dreams. In a cramped lady bedspacer she sleeps together with her best friend.
She wakes up at night to make her body everybody’s business. She acts on her hopes and dreams.
Nobody knows for sure if she is loved by her family and if she loved them back. Only that truth was running through her head that fateful early morning when she hazily got up from sleep to quench her thirst.
By the kitchen table she grabbed what was there. It was done and she was done by a silver cleaner the clarity and taste of water. Was it because it was in a bottled water container?
I see boisterousness while tomorrow remains uncertain.
It is our prerogative to calm down, to be happy, to live in the moment. But the same thing could be said about the opposite.
What weighs in more is if we choose to be.
We all want independence. But what we really need is freedom.
“Leaked” is already a humdrum-ming buzzword – a scheme already exposed. Just like one knows a linkbait when one sees one.
Here’s something for the morning:
What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me
~ In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel
The year was 1998. The place, Taft Ave., Manila. Clad in plaid shirt and my khaki slacks were accentuated by a brick in the left side pocket. It was a Nokia pre-5110 model (similar to the one pictured below). I took it out of my pocket, extruded the antenna to gather some signal and called my mom.
“I just finished the exam,” I said with a sigh of relief.
“DLSU Engineering, here I come.” I smugly slid back the cellular phone into my pocket.
No doubt that kids are attracted to pretty graphics. That’s why my grade 3 classmate who owned a personal computer was more popular by owning a Gyromite device with his Nintendo.
The PC screen was black and white and sported a keyboard and a dot-matrix printer. We used it to type and print some school papers. Then we’d trade NES game cartridges and play ping-pong on their dinner table.
The mouse in the house came a little later in ’95. It had a ball that gathered dirt. And yeah, the PC screen was colored already and said Windows 95.
We might feel that technology is leaving us behind especially if we try to keep up with it. But just like the phone and mouse, they simply evolve into more functional tools – the mouse lost its tail – the phone dropped its antenna and dissolved physical buttons – but they are still the phone and mouse we use to communicate with someone and control something, respectively (or soon interchangeably).
Maybe one day they will be totally transformed into something that we won’t recognize anymore (as compared with the pictures) — that’s how evolution goes as far as survival is concerned – you adapt and evolve or you simply perish and be forgotten.