OCTOBER 2016
U N D E R0 GROUND9
Issue HOME
I. HOME
a collaboration between Lee Jia-an and Lerah Mae Barcenilla
PROSE POETRY PHOTOGRAPHY ILLUSTRATION I.
quote
Š All writing by Lerah Mae Barcenilla 2017. All illustrations by Lee Jia-An 2017. Photographers are subsequently stated next to photos.
When our family returned to Philippines this August – after ten years – suddenly an existential crisis waited at every corner. What I called my ‘hometown’ was almost unfamiliar to me. There were whispers of what I remembered, of course – but everything was different. And then I started wondering, maybe nothing had changed at all – it was me who changed. It was me, who, after ten years, had outgrown the yellow house. Ever y thing w as m uch larger in my memory… but I guess, that was because I was small back then. So, maybe I’m a bit lost. I’m wandering. Floating somewhere up there in the clouds until I find somewhere to settle, until I find this elusive ‘home’. But that’s okay, right? Just like Hermann Hesse wrote: ‘Home is neither here nor there. Home is within you, or nowhere at all.’ He also said that ‘every path leads home’ – and that’s enough for me to keep searching, to keep walking, to carry on. Lerah Mae Barcenilla October 10, 2016
Didn’t know what I’d be missing when I landed on foreign land, frustrated because the country I was born in doesn’t feel like home. I think home looks like the house I grew up in, my sisters watching a TV show in the next room, before what existed outside became real. B ut s o m et hing fe el s wrong and I don’t know where I should be today. I won’t go back today, I won’t go back tomorrow, not the next tomorrow either. I am sorry. That afternoon was cold. Why does it get so dark at three p.m. around these parts? Something that should never have happened to me and I still don’t know how to put it into words. Homesick, I think maybe it doesn’t have to be a place, not what we call countries. I just want to stop feeling so cold, anxiety attacks during sunset. Currently: home is the sunny side up of the world. I miss the sun.
Jia-an Lee October 17, 2016
Welcome to UNDERGROUND09. In this issue you’ll find the fading memories of a writer and an artist’s nostalgic attempts to capture the essence of ‘home’.
contents ISSUE I. ‘HOME’
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‘to remember what i’ve forgotten’
09 ‘outside it’s raining’
12 ‘homeward’
15 ‘adarna’
17 ‘myth’
18 ‘serendipity’
21 ‘stranger’
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‘a stranger in pursuit of her whims’
24 ‘the yellow house’
to remember what i’ve forgotten I remember what seems an age ago, the heat of Summer and the light of June. When we spent the days hiding from Dusk’s glow and dancing beneath the smiles of the moon. The yellow house singing in Summer’s show, where Childhood awaits me forever bound; within its walls hides memories I know will help me in my travels to be found. Yet it has been too long and now faded are the memories I try hard to save. Was it all a mere canvas I’ve painted? A mirage in my head I’ve always craved? Sometimes I wonder what I truly want, To forget or remember what I can’t.
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Issue I.
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Sai Kung East Country Park Hong Kong (June 2016) Lee Jia-An
outside it’s raining
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HOME
Outside it is raining, the kind that whispers and hums of stories that drown in ocean waves and the places you’ve come from. You’ll see the fragments begin to fall, hear the stories as they fly in the tap, tap, tapping of water as they hit the roof and kiss a haze across your eyes. October 2016
You’ll find her dancing beneath the rain, you’ll find her in the dried flowers trapped in between yellowing pages, and the games she played with the Hours. But like the rain across your eyes, the world drowns into a haze, and now the dance is but a memory, a choreograph in a maze.
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Issue I.
Somewhere in Capiz Philippines (August 2016) Lerah Mae Barcenilla
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HOME
October 2016
‘I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.’ JEANETTE WINTERSON, ‘ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT’
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Issue I.
HOMEWARD we, trapped in the confines of Time; the memories, the fragments, the spilled acrylics and broken rhymes; like butterflies in jars – that now only exists in translation, shards of who
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we are, in our minds of ink and the paint of our creations; in the nostalgic itch behind our eyes, in the sadness that seep into our skin, the truths we tell ourselves – the lies; digging into our bones, the lyrics of a forgotten song, the fireflies that leads us towards Home – the place where we were headed all along. and in the morning, in our minds, our dreams, and in the evening, at every turn of fate, though we push them away, and try to forget – it seems doing so will only lead to regret. every time it rains in the land we grew up in, past paper planes and the places we’ve been. we always find them, buried beneath the sounds heartstrings stretched, minutes thin and ocean-bound.
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HOME
ALBERT CAMUS ‘Essay on the Sea’
‘The desperate man has no native land. I knew that the sea existed and that is why I live in the midst of this mortal time. Thus people who love each other and are separated can live in pain. But whatever they say, they do not live in despair: they know that love exists.’
October 2016
HARUKI MURAKAMI ‘The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle’
‘The ocean was one of the greatest things he had ever seen in his life—bigger and deeper than anything he had imagined. It changed its color and shape and expression according to time and place and weather. It aroused a deep sadness in his heart, and at the same time it brought his heart peace and comfort.’
Sai Kung East Country Park Hong Kong (June 2016) Lee Jia-An
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ADARNA a moment, before the sun sets, listen -can you hear it? one of seven songs; can you see it? ghostly lanterns through the thicket. the branches creak, the hollows whisper; they say ‘never follow the forest, walk with shades’ and ghost festivals, they hide a storm. crooked, cracked like broken verses, piedras platas shimmer on scorched grass, the golden tree burns beneath the stars,
‘PIEDRAS PLATAS’ means ‘silver stones’ - but in the Ibong Adarna myth, it is also a tree of gold.
and discordant dreams hum melodies of moonless slumber.
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Issue I.
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HOME
myth I turned you into a myth and I don’t want to let you go in my head you were always with the little me, did you know? did I tell you how I tried to be brave against the blank look in your eyes did I tell you how I tried to save the image of you etched on my mind? because you can’t remember me now, and at first I couldn’t control, couldn’t understand how, a part of me was no longer whole. October 2016
but now everything is but a memory some I dug back up only to bury, all the words I should have said and now they haunt me, plague my head. I knew I couldn’t control the passage of Time, it was always bound to catch me with each tick and chime; but was it wrong of me to dream that everything stayed the same, to see that nothing changed -I guess I’m the only one to blame. because maybe it was wrong of me to hope and dream of constancy when the very word I loathe, how could I not see. I should have known better, known it all along, Learnt from the Past that there is an end to this song. Should have known that Time will change and Time will fall, That there’s nothing I can do, no – nothing at all.
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serendipity all of this isn’t just a coincidence. all roads lead here. down by the seaside with the salt in the air, moss blooming on cracked ground; you remember them, don’t you? I know you do. you used to hate the seagulls circling above our heads - like vultures you used to say. but we still envied their wings. that was then, when the world was small. one bus stop with no sign, just a small wooden bench and a long dusty road; from this angle you could see the ocean beneath a vermillion noon. we were always going to leave - the world was small back then, too small for our wings - and we did. and it took years until we returned, after leaving our feathers like footsteps on the sand. back to where the salt kissed our lips, and where the ocean met our touch. all of this isn’t just a coincidence. all roads lead here.
NOUN the occurence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way 18
we knew that right from the start.
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Issue I.
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HOME
stranger The silence came when all light disappeared, and the buzz, the static was what I always feared, for it left me with my silence, trapped in my head, when the darkness arrived and put everyone to bed. It was a different world, a world in a dream and everything was what it used to be but not what they seemed, a world where the clock chased Time with every tick and tock, while I watched memories emerge from their cage and lock.
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And I soon realised that nothing remained the same, that now what was left hid behind glass and frame; because even if the oceans refused to let me drown, I was but a mere stranger -- a stranger in this town. Yet despite the unfamiliarity, the times I wanted to run, memories of my childhood lingered, they rose with the sun. despite the heat that threatened to smother, to unravel me, the rain fell in my dream and kissed blind reality. And maybe there’s nothing I can do to turn back the hands of Time, But I can try to preserve the memories in every verse and rhyme, Maybe there’s nothing I can do if Time makes me forget, Even then I know, if I don’t look back, I won’t regret.
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Issue I.
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Cuartero, Capiz Philippines (August 2016) Lerah Mae Barcenilla
A lonely observer, a will-o’-the-wisp, a wanderer, a stranger, in pursuit of her whims. She plays with the lights on water, a watcher of dreams, and she hums happily her many hymns. A dreamer, she runs after the sunrise, a game with morning dew; a wanderer, her eyes light up, the curiosity of old and new. She spins tales into webs, the mythweaver, she writes. And at night, a sleepwalker, her demons she fights. But despite the fear, the doubt that whispers in her bones, she knows that the world began beyond – she had always known. The rain will fall, the sun will rise, she knows she will miss home. But she still keeps on walking, keeps writing, she knows nothing is set in stone. With no sky above her head, neither clouds nor blue; the road before her is long, but it will lead home – it’s true. inspired by Hermann Hesse’s The Poet and The Hard Passage
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HOME
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Issue I.
the yellow house ‘Beneath these heavens I will be happy sometimes, and sometimes I will be homesick beneath them. The complete man that I am, the pure wanderer, mustn’t think about homesickness. But I know it, I am not complete, and I do not even strive to be complete. I want to taste my homesickness as I taste my joy.’ - Hermann Hesse
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‘Do you remember?’ the walls seem to whisper, they close in around her. To her ears they sound hesitant, cautious – maybe even resentful. ‘Do you remember?’ they keep repeating. She steps through the familiar doors, swallowing down bitter nostalgia because she can. Yes, she can remember. But that didn’t matter. Everything’s different. ‘No. You’re different,’ they murmur in increasing volume. ‘Nothing’s changed. You have.’ She can’t say anything. The voices are right, after all. Nothing’s changed at all. In this yellow house Time herself is frozen. But she’s grown now.
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HOME
October 2016
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Issue I.
Much, much taller and everything is smaller than what the remnants of her memories hold. ‘She’s still here, you know,’ the cracks on the walls says. ‘She’s still here.’
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She is. She peeks behind the peeling walls, hides behind dusty shelves with the leather-bound encyclopaedias, and among the stuffed brown bears and dinosaurs that somehow survived Time. That somehow survived memory. She skips across the little red circles painted on the living room floor. The circles are craters for her little feet. They are a game of skipping stones, every circle is an island, every path a maze. She hides behind sofas. She stares up at dusty bookshelves, balancing on her heels, always so amazed. The newcomer, the stranger (for that’s what she is now, it’s been too long) looks down at her own feet. The red circles are lily pods, not islands. The staircase creak as she runs up two steps at a time. She trails fingers against crumbling shelves and finds her in faded photographs. She is in piles of fading pages, old photos stuck on unravelling albums – damaged by old floods and rain and time and.... She was much much smaller. The adults around her much much taller – and younger. She smiled a lot. She had pigtails. She wore pretty dresses and surrounded herself with piles of toys like a throne, like her own army. ‘She’s been waiting for you,’ the voices murmur. ‘She knew you’ll be back. Someday.’ And that’s when the tears threatened to fall, because she’s been waiting too. But it didn’t matter. Her memories
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failed her. Fragmented stitches. Cracked at the edges and threatening to crumble. It didn’t matter because a part of her couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember. She was part of the whole – and she couldn’t remember. So what does it matter? ‘But you remember her,’ the walls breathe and she can hear their sad smiles. ‘You remember. That’s all that matters.’ ‘But she doesn’t--’ her voice cracks. The tears begin to fall. ‘She doesn’t.’ ‘It’s been too long,’ the voices whisper. ‘It’s been too long,’ she says, she nods, she wipes her tears. ‘You’ll remember now.’ the cracks on the wall smile. ‘Don’t push it away. Keep them. Keep them safe.’ With fingers across her eyes, she shakes her head. Droplets escape through her fingers and land on the tiled floor. Drops in an ocean. ‘It hurts to remember. It hurts to be the only one.’ ‘Then would you rather forget?’ She shakes her head frantically. No hesitation. ‘No, no, I--’ ‘Remember,’ the walls whisper, soft and gentle as they begin to retreat. ‘Hold fast to them. To this. To her. Hold fast and don’t let go. Never let go. They’ll always lead you back here.’ ‘Here,’ she whispers, choking on her words.
‘Home.’
HOME
October 2016
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the writer LERAH MAE BARCENILLA is one of those people; you know, the ones who are perpetually unsure of what to do with their lives. She’s interested in anything and everything -– from Greek and Philippine mythology, to zodiac signs and Nietzsche’s Theory of Eternal Recurrence, to Paradise Lost and untranslatable words. Meeting The Artist made her think about her existence and the inevitability of Time more than what is considered healthy. They say Geminis run on nervous energy and are always fidgety, so they should stay away from caffeine – but this Gemini always loved going against expectations. In her spare time, you can find her highly-caffeinated self idly scribbling on a notebook trying to write her two-somethings every day or taking photographs of cherry blossoms.
the artist LEE JIA-AN. every single
李家安. Defying day from five
the concept thirty a.m.
of age onwards.
I’ll say this again, I like it when heavy rain falls in the morning. I like it when it’s time for my plants to get repotted. I like it when I finish a painting and it looks like something that I could never have imagined. Sometimes I do a burlesque show and it makes me feel crazy about life. I do feel crazy about life sometimes. Just in case, you shouldn’t me. Three years of literature “construct an academic essay”. summer, spending an unhealthy
be expecting too much from and I still don’t know how to I still read too much during the seven hours a day with books.
Struggling to find my way around words but you can look at my paintings.
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UNDERGROUND09 ISSUE I. HOME OCTOBER 2016