The Youth Is On Fire Issue 4: Transience by The Youth Is On Fire

Transience TYIOF Issue 4

n one scene of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise, Jesse and Céline come across a poster promoting an exhibit for the works of painter Georges Seurat. You might’ve seen one of his paintings: “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte,” the one with the people at the park. “I love the way the people seem to be dissolving into the background,” Céline remarks, pointing at the sketches on the poster. “It’s like the environments, you know, are stronger than the people. His human figures are always so transitory.” She checks with Jesse to affirm if she’s chosen the right adjective, the best word to describe a situation being stronger than what inhabits it. The theme of this issue’s The Youth is On Fire is all about transience, the state of things not lasting forever, but Céline’s understanding is also true. People, places, objects, memories, relationships — all of these things are beholden to some greater force. Each of the writers and artists here have wrestled with this reality in their own ways, whether it be through joy, sorrow, or simple fascination. We hope these works stay with you for a long time. A long time is, after all, all we have.

Cover photo by JC Garcia 2

Photo by Jill Chan

Under the wire by Jhenina Nicole Sarte p. 4 Calm before by Toni Garcia p. 8 Yellow light by Selina Garcia p. 10 Flow and wavelengths by Jam Pasucal p. 12 Filler Characters by Maegan Joy Cantoria p. 18 Psychogeography by Carl Cervantes p. 20 Bedtime Blues by Ricos Rey p. 23 Vocabulary Lessons by Ima Ocon p. 25 7-11 by Frank Tamayo Sincerely, the Cosmically Insignificant by Andrea Panaligan p. 30

Under the wire by Jhenina Nicole Sarte Art by Frances Eridio

alking alone along the streets on my way home without my prescription glasses was a previous habit of mine. I could barely see anything. Everything was blurry, and I liked it. I used to think that the world was stupid, and on account of that I didn’t care about most things. I didn’t care about politics, what other people thought of me, making connections with people, current events, and the list goes on. I believed that there were better things to think about other than those, that I only had to survive the succeeding years, graduate twice and that’s it. I was trapped in my own bubble of comfort, perhaps even hiding from whatever it is out there. It was beyond me that my ignorance would haunt my present-self. In our current society, oftentimes, it’s kill or be killed. It’s either your dreams get killed or you kill your dreams yourself. I was 16 when I graduated high school and was the same age when I was

pressured into picking what I want to do with my life, as are most of us. When I was little, I used to fantasize about so many dream jobs; it ranged from being a painter, to a teacher, to an actress, to a writer, to a designer, to a nurse, and even to a simple sales clerk where I can bag grocery items and hand receipts to customers. I was a spontaneous dreamer. The thing about being young is that you view the world as your oyster. You don’t take into consideration what and what isn’t possible, you just know that you can and you will. But then you grow up and come face-to-face with this inevitable decision to choose, contemplating on so many facts, opinions and ideas until you get lost between your dreams and the reality, making you spend your days not knowing what to do and just deciding on whichever seems reasonable. As a result, I ended up picking a course that people somehow placed into my line of vision for reasons that 5

“I have probably made so many mistakes in life that I have reached the world’s quota of mistakes.”

I had considered but also questioned in the spur of the moment. I had other courses in mind during that time. It’s either I wanted to take up Journalism, Mass Communication, or maybe even Industrial Technology, but I still didn’t know what I really wanted to do for the rest of my life. Who would, at 16? It was tough being clueless and I hated the fact that I used to fancy the idea of not knowing what was in front of me. Finally, I deliberated on being practical, listed reasons for not taking my own choices, and ended up with the one people convinced me to take. Three days into college and I already felt like an outcast, being in the presence of people who obviously had potential in that field of work. I wanted so badly to just run away or finish soon enough just for the sake of graduating. However, I stayed. If I was given the chance to change my mind, I wouldn’t. I know, its cliché, but the beauty of a cliché is that it has already been ingrained into each and every one, and for that it could never fail. I have probably made so many mistakes in life that I have reached the world’s quota of mistakes, but I learned that not all mistakes are bad. Sometimes it just brings you revelations, create these probabilities, and gears you up for challenges that are yet to come. For me, it brought amazing friends, experiences, pure happiness and more. I still remember the time I realized my mediocre way of life and when I stood up to it, taking my chances under

the wire. What I understood from it was if I’m not given this big push or motivation or even this oncoming fear every so often, I will not burst through my bubble of comfort. I was welcomed with a foreign feeling of being a part of something and doing things that people wouldn’t expect I’d be doing. I met new people, made new experiences, decided things for myself, faced deadlines, plunged into this new world that I had no idea of, and found something that I adored. Sitting down with my laptop in front of me, deadlines at bay, articles to finish, I remembered feeling no uncertainty. All I felt was exhilaration, “This is the feeling that I want to feel for the days to come,” I told myself. That encounter made me recognize that I did what I did and it was real and it was great. The downside of it is that it took too long. I unconsciously sought for people’s validation and expectations that I became blind from my own abilities. Ignorance isn’t bliss, I tell you. Maybe it’s a part of growing up that I understood this, but I recalled almost everything that made up the younger version of myself and saw everything in a new perspective. It’s unfair to say I disliked my old self, but the good thing is I realized it on my own. In the wake of my ignorance, I have prevented myself from being awake and unraveling myself to the world. All the wasted chances, the time cut short, things that I could have made efforts on, things I could have enjoyed, and all the people I could have

made connections with when I could have seized every chance, created grand schemes, and engaged in things that mattered. It’s sad that we realize what we want when it’s slowly slipping away from arm’s reach. More than that, it was possible that I got too immersed in myself that I looked too close and didn’t see the big picture—what my existence was capable of. But still, it’s never too late. We exist to feel, and half the wonderful things in life would not be possible without the pain. We’re still young and the world has so many things in store for us. We are the shape shifters—in sadness and happiness, failures and greatness, to being hopeless and hopeful, to being weak and invincible, but what’s important is that we shift. Maybe that’s the reality of it all. That all of us would shift with the oncoming tides of life and we’ll be unprepared and we’ll make reckless decisions but at the end of the day what’s important is it was worth all of our efforts. It’s not a crime to make mistakes yet we look at it as if it will all be irrevocable. It will be, but we can choose another path. We’ll shift from being the worst versions of ourselves to someone that we desire to be. We can slip up and be anxious and get lost but what’s great about us is that we can be. We can be the colors no one has ever heard of and we’ll mix with the blacks and the whites of this world but we won’t disappear for we’ll evolve and transform and become one with the world. Failures and all.

Calm before by Toni Garcia

My spirit is used to storms, umbrellas and rain boots are second nature to me. My secret is I’m still not used to it. The truth is floods and typhoons are intersections forcing you to make a decision: Leave or stay? Repair or replace? Rebuild or recreate? Sometimes, if you’re not fast enough, the rain decides for you. The home that houses my soul has been worn down many times, so much that I sleep in the attic now. so much that when I wake up the first thing I do is look for water where it isn’t supposed to be, so much that I’m left with this question: Why does my house still break when the hurricane arrives? I thought I had fixed all the cracks I thought I had repaired all the breaks I thought I would be used to it by now. Maybe all this chaos is just another word for order we don’t understand. After all these years I forget I am made of exactly the same elements as the things trying to destroy me seventy percent of the human body is water. The same body breathes in air an average of twenty three thousand times a day. I am twenty three thousand hurricanes. After all these years of trying to survive the storm maybe instead I should become it.

Yellow Light

“For a while there was chaos, and then confusion, as everybody realized they were not hurt. They were alive.”

by Selina Garcia Photo by JC Garcia

t was incredibly dark when a yellow ball of light the size of a small hill went rushing for the planet. It crashed loudly against the surface of the water and landed safely at the bottom of the ocean. With an extraordinary kind of fire in its core, it was able to spread throughout the water. Further and further into the vastness, it lit everything it passed. Everyday this ball of light grew brighter until one day there they were, the creatures that lived quietly underneath. They were the ones that human beings would’ve immediately dismissed in the past as something fictitious. Some are so small they’d be invisible if not for their glowing silver eyes which were the size of a penny. Others come in different colors and in such strange shapes an abstract painter could’ve created them. They danced fluidly, crooned their lullabies softly, and made their world a calm and enchanting place. The ball of light’s horizon inched wider as it smoldered its way through the waves and finally reached the shore. Out of the ocean’s grasp, the heat began to turn unbearable. It rapidly set the world on fire. People tried to stop it as much as they could but this was not an ordinary ball of light that hit them. Flame crawled in every direction. It climbed trees, and each time it grabbed hold of a tip of a branch, sparks flew out and lightning burst up to the sky. Everyone tried to go to the center of the planet where they would be licked last by the fire, but it inevitably swallowed them all. Some people ran screaming. Some simply closed their eyes and said quiet goodbyes to the world. For a while there was chaos, and then confusion, as everybody realized they were not hurt. They were alive. They burned on wildly. Even the wonderful creatures deep beneath the ocean were on fire.

f you’ve been sleeping on Peaceful Gemini, we suggest boarding the hype train to her verse on “Remember the Remix” by hip hop outfit Shadow Moses —, one of the rap group’s older tracks transfigured by a number of prestigious guest appearances. “I’m part of the committee, bomb just like graffiti / Honest, conscious, I’m street as much as hippie,” Gemini spits, and the lone female voice on the track stands out the way, say, Nicki Minaj did on Kanye West’s “Monster.” Born Nicole Leonar and influenced by a myriad of greats, from Kendrick Lamar to our very own Protege, the 21-year-old Multimedia Arts student seems to be on track to becoming one of local rap’s most distinct voices. We caught up with the emerging emcee to talk about her beginnings, creative process, and what hip hop means to her.

Flow and wavelengths Peaceful Gemini’s artistry explores what it means to be human by Jam Pascual Photos by Chissai Bautista 12

How did you first get into rapping, as a practitioner? Would you say that music’s always been an important part of your life? Definitely important. I always thought it was a transcendental tool. Actually I’ve been thinking about it in particular lately... which led me to realize that music is the merging of the form and formless —- words and sounds transmuted to energy. I’d say the homies were a big influence as I was starting. I remember the boys would always hold a cypher every time we’d hang out, plus on top of that, I was an avid hip hop listener. And I was always a tomboy so

being that girl looking in from the outside, I really wanted to earn that involvement, y’know? So that’s when I started to practice writing. I notice, based on the tracks in your Soundcloud, that lyrically you explore themes of peace and spirituality. What is it about these topics that fascinate you? Hip hop really became my therapy and I consciously allowed it to reach into the deep introspectively. You could say I’ve dealt with life via hip hop — through listening, writing, flowing or catching live gigs. At this point, I think it’s already intensely rooted. But even with all this passion and fire, I know the fact that being an emcee is only secondary. This is the thought that grounds me. I’m a human first and foremost and I think that is why so much of my personal thoughts reflect in my songs. Hip hop became my platform to represent inner truths, to face darkness, to solve issues and to connect. I can say that my craft came from something that has flourished and continues to grow. Every move I make, whether in the hip hop scene or just in my typical day to day makes me level up as an emcee. It’s that special interconnection with life. That’s how I see it. I do hip hop to be educated by it. What’s your creative process like? Rhymes and lines come to me unpredictably and I just try my best to keep note of it, preserving them in a mental vault until the day comes that it

can be let out. It’s the awareness of these ideas that allows me to form a picture out of the puzzle pieces — sometimes it’s just a few bars or maybe a reference to something I like. I write in spirals; it’s unorthodox and I don’t know if anyone would even get the concept of how I work but that’s how I found out how to write my own way efficiently. I can also write either in silence or with an instrumental in the background, really anything goes, haha! How did your collaboration with Shadow Moses come about? Before I even got into emceeing, Ninno and I were already good friends from Benilde and it was basically just brought up in a casual chat. To be honest, I was shocked just to have the opportunity to be working with ShaMo, but when I learned about the other collaborators... that I was gonna be the 6th Samurai of that posse track, among all those dope emcees... I mean, damnD A M N. Dash Calzado, a.k.a Mighty Joe Young, Los whose music I grew up to ‘cause my Kuya Archie was a fan of the Out of Body Special, and I bet he doesn’t remember this, but I had randomly met C-lo (Delphi) when I first started rapping and even sampled one of my early verses to him. hahaha I hadn’t even known that he was

part of Mighty Miscellaneous that time! Crazy shit! LOL Kinda embarrassing now too but s’all good. It just really tripped me out how all of that connection manifested into “‘Remember the Remix.”’ They were rushing the album production so in a matter of just one week, I had to prove myself and come out with the baddest 16 bars... but I told myself, it couldn’t be just that, y’know? I challenged myself to get the message out aggressively but in a peaceful way — in other words, assertive. Now that’s the power I’ve been trying to master.

“Hip hop became my platform to represent inner truths, to face darkness, to solve issues and to connect.”

Why the stage name of Peaceful Gemini? Is astrology a topic of interest for you? Would you say you share the same traits as your sign? Why Peaceful Gemini? As much soul as music has, it has ego and I understand the essence of that balance, especially being a Gemini, and with hip hop, I’m able to practice that. Yeah, I read about astrology in my spare time. I know it’s not the ultimate truth though but it’s one of those aspects in life that’s just so fun to play with. I think it’s a good practice not to take things too seriously or personally, but sometimes I’m really caught off-guard with how naturally aligned I am with my sign.

Check out more of her stuff at: soundcloud.com/peacefulgemini

Art by AJ Nuevas

Filler Characters by Maegan Joy Cantoria Art by Alanis Avenilla

Once there was you and I, walking along busy streets leading nowhere. You took my hand but I slipped away Then, thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s me with the crystal glass half empty, half full, waiting for you to come back. I guess we drifted apart. Drowned out the noise from the secrets we shared. I guess weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re just filler characters In each of our own stories. Maybe everything is temporary You and I, The idea Of us.

“Suddenly, the familiar has become strange.”

Psychogeography

alking blindly, we follow the half-asleep crowd. Like ants, blindly following other ants, walking without thinking: drifting, daydreaming. The surroundings fall into a distant blur. We are tuned into the soothing ebb and flow of our daydreaming. Every commute is summarized into a blink during our daily trance. Every walk is merely a step that has forgotten every other step. The illusion of continuity: we are waist deep in the cosmic river that ends with a steep drain into the void. Stop moving. Look around. Notice the thick, cloudy water of time. Suddenly, the familiar has become strange. The blurred environment comes into focus and you see the silent structures, being constantly built around you. You see that you’re in a maze, a labyrinth, an intricate interconnected series of tunnels. Everyone else keeps moving through it (almost as if they’re just floating) but they’re sleeping. Sleepwalkers, dreaming of far-away places outside the city: beaches, mountains, wide open fields. In their dreams they have the luxury of leisure. But you are now awake. You might feel a slight grogginess; maybe some residual motion sickness. Take a deep breath. Now notice the strangeness of the things you thought you knew. Question how it makes you feel. Step outside the human transit lines that you’ve blindly followed and walk into secret spaces. You are now lost, but have you ever left?

by Carl Cervantes Photo by Jill Chan

Bedtime blues by Ricos Rey Art by Alanis Avenilla

I tell myself I am not lonely until my loneliness resembles a familiar face, warmer hands. There are nights when I make love to it, nights when suddenly my sheets spread-eagle like a raging ocean. Suddenly my pillows are devastated clouds against the blue of my walls. I twist and turn on this celestial bedspread, half-knowing the boy is somewhere here. Half-knowing the boy I want is not mine. Even my limbs, prismatic planets engirthing me, are not mine. But his ghost haunts me when I close my eyes. Phantom limbs envelop my body when I close my eyes. Someone has taken over my body, possessed me with a desire too ripe to eat when I close my eyes. And when I open them, a curtain of yellow light is crawling on the floor like a broken limb. My loneliness sculpted the sheets on the unmade bed. It resembles the shape of the boy I want to want. Under it, more sheets. Under it, more of this. 22

Vocabulary Lessons by Ima Ocon Art by Janina Espiritu

ou were more of an anime person before you switched over to medical dramas, and if there was one thing you picked up — aside from bits and pieces of phrases that can get you by as a tonguetied tourist — it was mono no aware, meaning gentle sadness at the transience of things. Such as pausing before the last bit of fish ice cream and savoring the tang of red beans on vanilla, because you know you’re only going to have an empty wrapper soon. But it isn’t accurate to call it sadness: there’s also a slight undercurrent of beauty, appreciation spiking precisely when it hits you that this can only end. * She’s your sister. Which is very strange to think about—you’ve never had a sister. Sure, the other grade school kids talked about theirs, how they could ask for help with homework and clumsily

watch how to put on makeup and wonder about tampons and PMS, but it never occurred to you that you wanted one. There was always a photo of her framed in the living room—your much-older sister who’s now living in Japan, who (to the chagrin of your parents) hardly writes back, who is more or less a stranger and whom you hardly ever wonder about.

“There are several ways that people can be gone, and the first is absence, an empty space in your life that you never notice until somebody actually occupies it.” But all of a sudden home, she’s coming home for the holidays—a change of heart—and when she steps out into the airport with her thick coat and leather 25

backpack, hair messily pulled up into a bun, you do not feel anything. Only slight awkwardness after the embrace with your parents, and she’s crouching a little before you, eyes friendly but very unfamiliar. There are several ways that people can be gone, and the first is absence, an empty space in your life that you never notice until somebody actually occupies it. You make her laugh by asking her how to swear in Japanese—you already know some, but you can always improve when it comes to being vulgar. * The title of “best friend” makes you uncomfortable because there’s weight and obligation behind it, but this girl— whom you meet at a party, while she’s on her third shot and you’re on your fifth— bullies you into it. She’s a bit too loud and aggressive, and acts as if every other moment is a scene from a musical where she’s the heroine. She asks for your name, then you stagger home together—thanks to the coincidence of living in the same student apartment—then somehow she

falls asleep on your sofa, and there’s nothing like being drunk together to cement a friendship. Her playlist is full of upbeat Korean music, and she makes fun of the sheets of kanji characters written dutifully on stacks of notebooks near your bed. Maybe you got used to her, or gave in to her presence, but for two years you hang out in sandwich shops and try out for the same theater org—you’d rather help with production, and she happily took the stage—and bitch about boys. Sometimes you walk outside, at midnight, despite all the smog and possible thieves lurking in the corners. For some reason, you remember lying together underneath a tree, peacefully solving quadratic

“You wish it could stay like this forever. But of course, he leaves too.” squares, and thinking: those autumn leaves falling around us could be cherry blossoms, right before she screamed because a worm had dropped right onto her bare shoulder.

After graduation—one last round of photos, and the promise to stay in touch—she vanished, slowly, stilted online conversations degrading into stock greetings on birthdays. Her photos appear on your feed, and you think: we don’t know each other anymore. How are you? you almost ask, but there is so much to say, and in those cases, it’s easier to say nothing. * Transience, when it comes to people, is easy to know, easy to memorize; it doesn’t take years. You’re sitting cross-legged, wiping your sweat with a towel, telling him about mono no aware because he’s one of the few people who would listen—whether he’s only being kind or it genuinely interests him doesn’t matter as much anymore—and he nods, saying it’s a lovely concept, then goes on to comment about a long-ago ex that he never got over. You have the longest, most beautiful conversations—some of them, oddly enough, while downing an energy drink and plopped down on the gym floor, a street away from your respective

offices—and you come to trust him so much that he becomes your sounding board, your human journal, the person you text when you’re feeling like shit (and called your boss a two-faced jerk after too much brandy), the person that you could almost like but don’t because there are too many differences. All in all, he’s your person, even though you suspect that it’s slightly one-sided. You wish it could stay like this forever. But of course, he leaves too. “New York,” he proclaims, while pumping his fists up in the air, about to fulfill his dreams, and you’re tethered between sad and happy, proud and devastated. You’re confident you know the general varieties of loss, can chart the misstep in your routine—and yet he leaves, and you’re fine. Loss in the sense that he’s on the other side of the world, but also it’s as if he’s still here, telling you you’re alright, telling you to believe in yourself, his voice that you hear in the worst of days, a presence that can never really be gone because it’s become part of you. You understand mono no aware then, at 23, and it is with a warm glow.

7-11 by Frank Tamayo Art by Joshua Martin Trinidad

Three a.m. is the arrival of the nine p.m. soul wandering the night for a moment of escape in the houses of other men. Sometimes, the clerk pays no attention to the chimes of another man’s arrival in his domain. The stranger meanders across the aisles picking the right, cheap meal that would satisfy him until morning. All the packages faded into shelves unlike the way it used to be when he was new to this nightly convenience. Halfway to finishing, the stranger’s brows squinted at the meal he was already consuming. He finishes anyway. The chimes sound the stranger’s departure into the night only for a different kind of meal. The next time the store announces his arrival, emptiness greets his messy hair, his lost expression, and his odd breath with another cheap meal. 28

Sincerely, the Cosmically Insignificant

his is probably the first non-thesis piece I have written in almost a year. Ever since I learned how to write, I never really stopped. It didn’t matter if I or others thought I wasn’t any good; this was something I knew I loved with all of me. Writing wasn’t a hobby—it was a vice. Sad? Write. Pissed off? Write. Happy? Write. I couldn’t imagine my life, myself, without it. Bukowski said it best: take a writer away from his typewriter and all you have left is the sickness which started him typing in the beginning, and to think that I spent an entire year writing almost nothing... what kind of self-rut was I in to let myself suffer like that? No one knows me better than my words do, and like all failed lovers, we are now strangers. That’s not a bad thing, however. It’s no secret that I am indeed a stereotypical Teen Girl Who Is Fueled By Pseudo-Sadness™, and recently I’ve noticed that all I’ve ever published is sad/angry writing—I mean, who wants to read that? Why did I think complaining about how crap life can be was an effective way to impact people? I am full of love and life and light but when I sit down, pen in hand, I turn into this, this whiny, pathetic excuse for a writer who never seems to find the right words and is miserable because of it. I didn’t want to be that. I wanted to evolve. You know that quote, if you want to kill yourself, kill what you don’t like? That’s what I did—for the first time, I shut up. I let the world move without me; everyone else was creating and I was their audience. I listened, not because I wanted to be inspired, or because I wanted to compare; I listened because I wanted to. I thought I would be nothing without writing, but I am too surrounded by art and beauty to be empty. It made me happy, sure, but there’s also a certain kind of joy you only find in the colorful stories of others, in putting on someone else’s shoes and discovering that there is a world so much bigger than you, a world you have been blatantly ignoring because you’re too busy trying to make words shiny enough to make a difference. There is a comfort in being small and insignificant, and right now comfort is all I crave. So come and tell me about that time you laughed so hard milk came out of your nose, or why you love your favorite movie. Show me songs you know all the words to but never sing in public, or we can stay quiet and admire the constant hum of an earth that is constantly moving. I’ve accepted that the world is dynamic and I am no longer trying to keep up with it; instead I will let it take me wherever, and I will be admiring the view from there. Here’s to being small and listening, finally.

by Andrea Panaligan Art by Harold Dela Rosa

Photo by Alphonzo Paco

Contributors

JC Garcia Jill Chan Jhenina Nicole Sarte Frances Eridio Toni Garcia AJ Nuevas Maegan Joy Cantoria Alanis Avenilla Carl Cervantes Ricos Rey Ima Ocon Janina Espiritu Joshua Martin Trinidad Andrea Panaligan Harold Dela Rosa Alphonzo Paco 33

This Youth is on Fire is the monthly online of

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