UNPUBLISHED PICTURES
By: Iris P. Concepcion

"God may have given him a voice with an amplifier built in, but it's the argument that carries the day."---(Bono on J. Sachs)

"The ideas in this book are not exactly sing-along but they have a hook you won't forget."---- (Bono)

I shall post the pictures later but these are their cascading stories.

They are the delirious running threads of the semi-gypsies in my own small, hometown.

The first visage was taken during a mass.

These two boys, let us call them M and C, left their seats, like two sweet tea cups in daffodils, to join me in my pew---the exact way bolts are fastened to door knobs that one can no longer unscrew. It felt like having two children sans the o.b.-gyne labor via the Virgin Mary spiritual osmosis way. They were playing with their cellular phones, a game of sort. I just felt a need to touch them, make them cozy with their bottlecap necklaces (they tied the pounded bottlecaps in an inexpensive string--looks priceless than Bulgari when they had it on), colorful slippers and sunny faces. Look at them and their effervescent smiles. You can just weep with their luminous forebearing.

I asked the older one what his name is. The younger one gave me a toothy grin. They later compromised who shall sit beside me, the younger one having that distinction, until the older one made his case clearly :"My turn to sit beside her." And they both obeyed like all sweet boys do. All throughout the mass, they were tailing, following me, prompting one to ask: "Are these kids yours?" I gave my polite: "No. But I would love to own them."

We ate together after. They were very independent, getting their own plates. Where I am, they too are. When knived, to my mind, the pair mirrors souls that are not only beautiful but distinctly beating with my very own. I love looking at them, honestly tightlocked and genuinely affectionate to people around them and each other.

Second pic is a memento I happily inherited from a debut function. I was given a girl figurine in a praying pose. In between my gobbling, a boy figurine was given to a friend I was conversing with. I requested if I could have it. I surmised, it, or he rather, could get lonely in the shelf by his lonesome with no companion to twiddle his thumbs with. He was given to me. I deduced, they'd be breeding rabbits now that they are together. I baptized them (since I had this long fantasy of being a priest who can sprinkle water on infants' foreheads--it looks like a rock-and-roll job description) after my name (the girl) and Joe (the boy). Even figurines have a right to be named, with full citizenship, sense of selfhood and voting rights, not to say the least. Besides, I couldn't name them Statue 1 and Statue 2 forever. They were both heavily lipsticked, plump in full bloom, to connote fitness with healthy cheeks and perhaps.....being rightly fed? They are no fairy tale characters but they believe in God, being rabid churchgoers. They live in Antarctica where fish thawing is extremely difficult. They have a pet whose name could not be disclosed until its furry skin appears.

These figurines would be sharing a bed soon while shrieking like faggots in midstream water being harangued by fat piranhas.

No, they'd be shrieking just because they are happy and not only that, they are happy being figurines and being named after spectacular persons.

The third picture features my youngest niece and nephew. Niece has a great shirt on, camouflaged by the dark, moony night. The Beatles, it said, with a helicopter that looks like a submarine with the line "nothing is real" underneath it. She is fiddling with her food while her brother eats like he could drown a tank.

We had swordfish swimming in vegetable water that night. We had pizza, spaghetti and hamburger the previous night and silently decided we can't be carnivorous forever. Their current vaudeville is satirizing Lady Ga-ga and fighting over who is going to be the next hottest pop princess. Exposures outside my town made them freshly cheerful and innovative.

It is kind of a retard world but these children are laughing and singing (hitting the right notes, exceptionally, except for the the boy who loves to awfully deconstruct even the most deconstructed songs). I gave him a P20 shirt and I think he can wear it on our next balcony party. Other children drop by and they also argue.

Even Bono saw through that: It is the argument that carries the day. Our argument is: No hecklers please. When you are mad, pipe it.

Sing.