Today is my fifth day away from the beaches of Boracay and I still feel as if I have a massive hangover from the sights, the smells and the stuff I took there. The feeling is very much like being lovesick — how in the first couple of months with a new beau you feel as if your heart will collapse and your arteries will constrict if and when you find yourself within five miles of air space without him. My mind still wanders to the soft waves and the white sand. And I also think about the new lives I’ve connected with while I was there.

Mars has always been a very welcoming guy. I find it nice how he keeps Miguel company during the times when I couldn’t go out because I had to finish a ton of work. Miguel told me that he didn’t really keep him company because he mostly busy with his kitesurfing, but we appreciate him anyways. Mars is tall, say around 6″2 or within a couple of inches around that margin, and he’s half german. I think it’s pretty novel the way he shakes his long legs and raises his arms to feel if there’s any good wind to raise his kite, like an addict waiting for the next hit to kick in. He told us he can’t wait until a typhoon comes in, so he can try out his four square meter kite, having just recently torn his seventeen-incher when it landed on the mast of a parao.

And there’s also Rio, a hip hop DJ from Hey Jude, Cocomangas and some other bars there. Rio told us that he went to the island to follow his girlfriend who teaches in Brent International School. He also told us that itreally didn’t matter where his girlfriend was going – like if she had to teach in a faraway place like Tarlac, he’d still follow her there – it was just his luck that she ended up on Boracay. He’s quite the funny guy, braving the tides by swimming from Nami to Balinghai while conscously beating the sunset. We could have lost him should the sun have set on him before he got to the Balinghai shore, because he had night blindness, and he couldn’t have seen shit if he didn’t swin fast enough.

Miguel and I also met Rui (you pronounce that as “HUY”), a portugese poet who has been around the world more than a couple of times. It was very evident how much he loved his words, and he was always in a constant state of wonder at the nature around him – as he was always in a state of wonder at the fact that he’s in love with his new girl, Frieda. He seemed to percieve things like a young boy, marveling at the trees and the wondrous fruit which fell to the ground only to crack open revealing white and fuschia flowers.

Having shared a couple of jam jars of shrooms with these guys and of course, Miguel, I found that the cerebral intoxication which came with the drugs and the conversations led me to understand things more universally. I miss that day because I believe that for a moment I was able to see the bigger picture – that without the purpose, wonder, and the amazement of seeing things as if they were new, everything else faded to grey and became nothing.