Alex Maskara
Thoughts, Stories, Imagination of Filipino American Alex Maskara
Welcome
~
Ramon Bustamente stood by the wide bay window of his small condominium in Koreatown, Los Angeles, staring absently at the rustling fronds of a worn-out palm tree swaying against the golden smog of a late California afternoon. From this angle, the city always looked like a dream fraying at the edges—too loud, too fast, and far too young for a man like him.
It was Naomi’s story that wouldn’t let go of him. Not the modern one—some Hollywood Naomi with a heartbreak and a bottle of rosé—but the old Naomi, the one from scripture. The widow. The mother who had buried both her sons in foreign soil. She had no pension, no security net, no one left to hold her hand. She went back to Judea, because at least there, there was familiarity. A memory of home.
Ramon wasn’t much different.
There was a time, not long ago, when his sister Marietta and her two husbands—first the brutish one, later the gentler Matt—along with his friend Jim, had formed a makeshift circle of support. A motley crew of urban survivors, bound not by blood but by the gentle glances and silent assurances that aging didn’t have to mean solitude. Ramon, older than all of them by a good decade, often joked he was their spiritual dry run for old age. They would tease him, cook for him, sit on porches and share unimportant stories that felt important in the moment.
But fate, he thought bitterly, always trims the cast.
Marietta was now in hospice, her bright laughter reduced to vague memories and hospital whispers. Matt, whose health had always been shaky, was barely holding on. Jim was still around—but barely more than a ghost of companionship. He was kind, loyal, and perpetually broke, dependent on Ramon for housing, utilities, and the illusion of stability. Ramon knew that if it came down to it, Jim’s heart would be willing—but his hands would be empty.
So now, the path was starting to clear. Like Naomi, Ramon needed to go home.
Back to the Philippines. Back to the tropical rains and cousins who still remembered his voice. It had been thirty-four years. The thought was dizzying—like walking back into a room you left as a young man only to find your own ghost still sitting in the chair. But the logic was sound. Back home, he could live out his years in peace, with faces that looked like his, in a language that didn’t trip on his tongue. He could finally be surrounded by people who might not know all his stories, but at least shared his beginning.
Still, there were logistics.
He couldn’t abandon Jim just like that. Doing so would haunt him for the rest of his life. Jim would need stable housing. And then there were the properties—bits of California he had managed to hold onto, now waiting to be sold, their proceeds earmarked for a modest retreat somewhere near the desert borders: maybe Barstow, maybe Bullhead City. A place close to an airport, so he could come and go. He wasn’t closing the book on America—just dog-earing the page.
But his thoughts kept circling back to his sister Marietta, his only family in California.
He had imagined her final moments. Not in sterile detail, but in light. She would be drifting, perhaps, toward something radiant. A laughing breeze. A house with no corners. Maybe their parents were waiting for her, or their older brother, cracking jokes at heaven’s gate. Ramon tried to picture her not as she was—frail, exhausted, swollen with pain—but as she could now be: dancing, laughing, unburdened.
The grief, he reminded himself, belonged to the living. The dead were free.
And there were still things left to do for the living. Marietta, in her final years, had left him something: a modest IRA account. Her silent gesture. She couldn’t help much while she was alive—not for lack of love, but because life hadn’t given her much to give. Now Ramon would pass it on, quietly and with dignity, to the family she had so longed to support. His prayer was that she would be remembered, not for the years of silence or pain, but for this last, quiet kindness.
Perhaps, he thought, he could use a bit of that to pay off his own medical bills. Nothing outrageous—just $3,700. A strange kind of blessing, really. As though she were helping him, finally, in her own time.
His mind wandered again, not to the estate plans or real estate listings, but to their shared past. Marietta’s life in Los Angeles had not been kind. She arrived like an exotic bird clipped of its wings, her dreams of marriage and work and love smashed against the gritty realities of immigrant life. Skilled in nursing but naïve in love, she had married a man from the low end of humanity’s spectrum—a man who caged her spirit and narrowed her world to four walls and a ball of yarn.
For ten years she crocheted in silence.
It was only after they pushed the man out of her life that she began to heal. Her second love—her rescuer, later her husband—helped her walk again, literally and figuratively. They taught her to drive. She started laughing again. She talked about walking in the park. She even joined a gym.
Then came the sickness.
First the blood sugar spikes. Then the ketoacidosis. Toes were amputated. The cancer came next—silent, then screaming. Ramon remembered it all in excruciating detail. The elastic bandages, the breathless calls, the hospital beds, the silences that said more than any diagnosis ever could. Her voice had once filled their phone conversations with the gossip of siblings and tales of old neighbors. But in those final months, it shrank, like a house closing its windows one by one.
They had both been sick. They both knew it. And still, neither dared to say the worst aloud.
Now, with her journey nearly complete, Ramon stood alone in his apartment, surrounded by the hum of the refrigerator and the faint noise of a car alarm in the distance. He whispered a prayer not for himself, but for her. That she find her way into the light, quickly, painlessly. That she float, finally free.
He thought of her as a pioneer in a strange land, now heading home, like Naomi, like him.
The world would forget them in time. All of them. That was the natural order. But in the time left to him, Ramon Bustamente would make sure her memory lingered—softly, like the smell of cassava cake in a childhood kitchen, or the echo of a hymn sung far away.
2025-06-20 02:11:51
shortstories
Ephesians 1:3–6
Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Popong found himself adrift in a sea of modern distractions. The buzzing, flashing world of social media called out, a siren song tempting him away from the quiet corners of reflection. It was a typical Sunday morning in his life, a day meant for rest, yet the insistent question nagged at him: What should I post today? His thumb hovered over the social media app icon, poised to plunge him into the endless scroll, the barrage of opinions and curated images. But something made him pause. A whisper of intuition suggested a different path, a turn inward rather than outward. Perhaps, instead of seeking validation in the digital realm, he should acknowledge the quiet victories, the personal milestones that often went unremarked, even by himself.
Yesterday's struggle with the ancient ASUS laptop came to mind. It was a humble task, not one that would garner likes or shares, but it was his. He had wrestled with the stubborn machine, its innards refusing to cooperate. The SSD upgrade, meant to breathe new life into the aging device, had initially presented an infuriating series of roadblocks. The first attempt at cloning the drive ended in failure. The new, sleek SSD remained stubbornly invisible to the system. Countless retries followed, punctuated by moments of frustration and doubt. Just when he thought he had conquered one challenge, another loomed. He discovered that only a fraction of the new drive's capacity had been recognized, leaving hundreds of gigabytes of unused potential. A frantic search for free, reliable partitioning software ensued. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he had merged the unallocated space, completing the upgrade. A wave of deep satisfaction washed over him, a quiet triumph in a small corner of his world.
The late-night hours spent hunched over the laptop had been a fog, blurring into the present. Now, as the new day dawned, he was eager to return to his ordinary rhythm, to the small rituals that grounded him. While waiting for the final software installations to complete, he had briefly engaged with social media. But this time, he had approached it differently. He treated his posts like fleeting thoughts, casual conversations tossed into the digital air. He understood now that most people consumed content mindlessly, their eyes gliding over the screen, their minds elsewhere. He refused to be held captive by that dynamic. His goal was to share, then detach, to let his ideas drift without clinging to the hope of validation.
The silence of his early mornings was precious. It was during these hours that he felt closest to a sense of inner peace. He spoke to the Holy Spirit, a silent, unwavering listener who offered no judgment, no interruptions. These conversations, often accompanied by a strong cup of coffee, were his most cherished form of meditation. They helped him untangle the knots in his mind, to quiet the anxious voices that clamored for attention. It was a time to recenter, to remember what truly mattered.
His relationship with technology had begun long ago, in the nascent days of the internet. He remembered the excitement of his first PC, the thrill of hearing the modem’s screech as it connected to the world. Each morning, he would eagerly check his AOL inbox, the messages flickering onto the screen like tiny miracles. That era had ignited a passion within him, leading him to pursue a second degree in IT. He dreamed of blending his love for storytelling with his fascination for computers, envisioning a future where he could create new worlds, new tools for expression.
The reality had been different, of course. Those grand ambitions had morphed and matured, taking on a quieter, more subtle form. He still tinkered with tech, but his enthusiasm was tempered by a newfound awareness of its potential pitfalls. He had learned to set boundaries, to limit his screen time, recognizing how easily it could deplete his energy. The desire to create remained, but it was now accompanied by a deeper questioning. Why do I go online? What am I searching for? Is it simply a way to escape the silence?
Meditation had led him back to the present, to the tangible world. He made a conscious effort to spend time in nature, to feel the earth beneath his feet. Silence had become a refuge, a place where he could reconnect with himself. After his morning quiet time, he ventured to John Prince Park for a long walk. The exercise cleared his head, washing away the digital cobwebs that had accumulated over the previous days. The lake breeze made the Florida heat bearable, though the swarms of gnats were an unwelcome presence. He watched as young runners passed him, their strides effortless. I used to feel like that, he thought, a nostalgic pang in his heart. Invincible.
A trip to Publix followed. He noted his changing relationship with food. Gone were the days of indulgent comfort eating. Now, he prioritized healthy choices, limiting carbs, and increasing his vegetable intake. His bulk purchases of fish, though economical, had led to a monotonous diet. He hoped to find more variety, more inspiration in the kitchen. Back home, he felt a sense of quiet satisfaction. He had spent his day well. He had walked, he had saved money, he had resisted the pull of aimless scrolling. Social media had not held its usual allure. He knew now that a few posts a week were sufficient, that he didn’t need to perform for an audience. Fewer people engaged with his content these days, and he was strangely at peace with that.
He thought back to the early days, to his excitement at discovering Linux, the joy of building his own computers from spare parts, the sheer exhilaration of learning. The internet had once felt like a vast, unexplored territory, full of promise and possibility. Now, it seemed more like a stage, a place for carefully curated personas. People chase followers, not fulfillment, he mused. He hadn’t learned to code for likes and shares. He had learned to build, to create, to understand. The web had transformed from a frontier for thinkers to a carnival for performers.
In this new chapter of his life, he found himself drawn to older, more solitary pursuits. He recalled his childhood notebooks, filled with stories and poems that he had never dared to share. Writing had never been about fame or recognition. It had been a refuge, a way to make sense of the world. The computer, too, had originally entered his life as a tool for writing. Now retired, and with little to show in the way of tangible achievements, he felt no regret. Instead, he felt a profound sense of release. Anonymity had become a comfortable cloak. His work no longer needed to impress, it only needed to be true.
Yesterday’s laptop upgrade and short reel on knee exercises had felt productive. Today, he had meditated, walked, and returned to his personal diary. He toyed with the idea of turning these entries into fiction, sharing them on his old blog, even if no one read them. Later, perhaps, he would revisit his abandoned Node.js project, the one he had left untouched since 2021. It would be like starting over, but this time, it would be for himself and for the Spirit who listened in the quiet spaces of his heart.
2025-06-08 21:05:48
popong
Ramon Bustamante Returns Home
Ramon Bustamente stood by the wide bay window of his small condominium in Koreatown, Los Angeles, staring absently at the rustling fronds of a worn-out palm tree swaying against the golden smog of a late California afternoon. From this angle, the city always looked like a dream fraying at the edges—too loud, too fast, and far too young for a man like him.
It was Naomi’s story that wouldn’t let go of him. Not the modern one—some Hollywood Naomi with a heartbreak and a bottle of rosé—but the old Naomi, the one from scripture. The widow. The mother who had buried both her sons in foreign soil. She had no pension, no security net, no one left to hold her hand. She went back to Judea, because at least there, there was familiarity. A memory of home.
Ramon wasn’t much different.
There was a time, not long ago, when his sister Marietta and her two husbands—first the brutish one, later the gentler Matt—along with his friend Jim, had formed a makeshift circle of support. A motley crew of urban survivors, bound not by blood but by the gentle glances and silent assurances that aging didn’t have to mean solitude. Ramon, older than all of them by a good decade, often joked he was their spiritual dry run for old age. They would tease him, cook for him, sit on porches and share unimportant stories that felt important in the moment.
But fate, he thought bitterly, always trims the cast.
Marietta was now in hospice, her bright laughter reduced to vague memories and hospital whispers. Matt, whose health had always been shaky, was barely holding on. Jim was still around—but barely more than a ghost of companionship. He was kind, loyal, and perpetually broke, dependent on Ramon for housing, utilities, and the illusion of stability. Ramon knew that if it came down to it, Jim’s heart would be willing—but his hands would be empty.
So now, the path was starting to clear. Like Naomi, Ramon needed to go home.
Back to the Philippines. Back to the tropical rains and cousins who still remembered his voice. It had been thirty-four years. The thought was dizzying—like walking back into a room you left as a young man only to find your own ghost still sitting in the chair. But the logic was sound. Back home, he could live out his years in peace, with faces that looked like his, in a language that didn’t trip on his tongue. He could finally be surrounded by people who might not know all his stories, but at least shared his beginning.
Still, there were logistics.
He couldn’t abandon Jim just like that. Doing so would haunt him for the rest of his life. Jim would need stable housing. And then there were the properties—bits of California he had managed to hold onto, now waiting to be sold, their proceeds earmarked for a modest retreat somewhere near the desert borders: maybe Barstow, maybe Bullhead City. A place close to an airport, so he could come and go. He wasn’t closing the book on America—just dog-earing the page.
But his thoughts kept circling back to his sister Marietta, his only family in California.
He had imagined her final moments. Not in sterile detail, but in light. She would be drifting, perhaps, toward something radiant. A laughing breeze. A house with no corners. Maybe their parents were waiting for her, or their older brother, cracking jokes at heaven’s gate. Ramon tried to picture her not as she was—frail, exhausted, swollen with pain—but as she could now be: dancing, laughing, unburdened.
The grief, he reminded himself, belonged to the living. The dead were free.
And there were still things left to do for the living. Marietta, in her final years, had left him something: a modest IRA account. Her silent gesture. She couldn’t help much while she was alive—not for lack of love, but because life hadn’t given her much to give. Now Ramon would pass it on, quietly and with dignity, to the family she had so longed to support. His prayer was that she would be remembered, not for the years of silence or pain, but for this last, quiet kindness.
Perhaps, he thought, he could use a bit of that to pay off his own medical bills. Nothing outrageous—just $3,700. A strange kind of blessing, really. As though she were helping him, finally, in her own time.
His mind wandered again, not to the estate plans or real estate listings, but to their shared past. Marietta’s life in Los Angeles had not been kind. She arrived like an exotic bird clipped of its wings, her dreams of marriage and work and love smashed against the gritty realities of immigrant life. Skilled in nursing but naïve in love, she had married a man from the low end of humanity’s spectrum—a man who caged her spirit and narrowed her world to four walls and a ball of yarn.
For ten years she crocheted in silence.
It was only after they pushed the man out of her life that she began to heal. Her second love—her rescuer, later her husband—helped her walk again, literally and figuratively. They taught her to drive. She started laughing again. She talked about walking in the park. She even joined a gym.
Then came the sickness.
First the blood sugar spikes. Then the ketoacidosis. Toes were amputated. The cancer came next—silent, then screaming. Ramon remembered it all in excruciating detail. The elastic bandages, the breathless calls, the hospital beds, the silences that said more than any diagnosis ever could. Her voice had once filled their phone conversations with the gossip of siblings and tales of old neighbors. But in those final months, it shrank, like a house closing its windows one by one.
They had both been sick. They both knew it. And still, neither dared to say the worst aloud.
Now, with her journey nearly complete, Ramon stood alone in his apartment, surrounded by the hum of the refrigerator and the faint noise of a car alarm in the distance. He whispered a prayer not for himself, but for her. That she find her way into the light, quickly, painlessly. That she float, finally free.
He thought of her as a pioneer in a strange land, now heading home, like Naomi, like him.
The world would forget them in time. All of them. That was the natural order. But in the time left to him, Ramon Bustamente would make sure her memory lingered—softly, like the smell of cassava cake in a childhood kitchen, or the echo of a hymn sung far away.
2025-06-20 02:11:51
shortstories
Popong Sunday
Ephesians 1:3–6
Praise for Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. 4 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
Popong found himself adrift in a sea of modern distractions. The buzzing, flashing world of social media called out, a siren song tempting him away from the quiet corners of reflection. It was a typical Sunday morning in his life, a day meant for rest, yet the insistent question nagged at him: What should I post today? His thumb hovered over the social media app icon, poised to plunge him into the endless scroll, the barrage of opinions and curated images. But something made him pause. A whisper of intuition suggested a different path, a turn inward rather than outward. Perhaps, instead of seeking validation in the digital realm, he should acknowledge the quiet victories, the personal milestones that often went unremarked, even by himself.
Yesterday's struggle with the ancient ASUS laptop came to mind. It was a humble task, not one that would garner likes or shares, but it was his. He had wrestled with the stubborn machine, its innards refusing to cooperate. The SSD upgrade, meant to breathe new life into the aging device, had initially presented an infuriating series of roadblocks. The first attempt at cloning the drive ended in failure. The new, sleek SSD remained stubbornly invisible to the system. Countless retries followed, punctuated by moments of frustration and doubt. Just when he thought he had conquered one challenge, another loomed. He discovered that only a fraction of the new drive's capacity had been recognized, leaving hundreds of gigabytes of unused potential. A frantic search for free, reliable partitioning software ensued. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, he had merged the unallocated space, completing the upgrade. A wave of deep satisfaction washed over him, a quiet triumph in a small corner of his world.
The late-night hours spent hunched over the laptop had been a fog, blurring into the present. Now, as the new day dawned, he was eager to return to his ordinary rhythm, to the small rituals that grounded him. While waiting for the final software installations to complete, he had briefly engaged with social media. But this time, he had approached it differently. He treated his posts like fleeting thoughts, casual conversations tossed into the digital air. He understood now that most people consumed content mindlessly, their eyes gliding over the screen, their minds elsewhere. He refused to be held captive by that dynamic. His goal was to share, then detach, to let his ideas drift without clinging to the hope of validation.
The silence of his early mornings was precious. It was during these hours that he felt closest to a sense of inner peace. He spoke to the Holy Spirit, a silent, unwavering listener who offered no judgment, no interruptions. These conversations, often accompanied by a strong cup of coffee, were his most cherished form of meditation. They helped him untangle the knots in his mind, to quiet the anxious voices that clamored for attention. It was a time to recenter, to remember what truly mattered.
His relationship with technology had begun long ago, in the nascent days of the internet. He remembered the excitement of his first PC, the thrill of hearing the modem’s screech as it connected to the world. Each morning, he would eagerly check his AOL inbox, the messages flickering onto the screen like tiny miracles. That era had ignited a passion within him, leading him to pursue a second degree in IT. He dreamed of blending his love for storytelling with his fascination for computers, envisioning a future where he could create new worlds, new tools for expression.
The reality had been different, of course. Those grand ambitions had morphed and matured, taking on a quieter, more subtle form. He still tinkered with tech, but his enthusiasm was tempered by a newfound awareness of its potential pitfalls. He had learned to set boundaries, to limit his screen time, recognizing how easily it could deplete his energy. The desire to create remained, but it was now accompanied by a deeper questioning. Why do I go online? What am I searching for? Is it simply a way to escape the silence?
Meditation had led him back to the present, to the tangible world. He made a conscious effort to spend time in nature, to feel the earth beneath his feet. Silence had become a refuge, a place where he could reconnect with himself. After his morning quiet time, he ventured to John Prince Park for a long walk. The exercise cleared his head, washing away the digital cobwebs that had accumulated over the previous days. The lake breeze made the Florida heat bearable, though the swarms of gnats were an unwelcome presence. He watched as young runners passed him, their strides effortless. I used to feel like that, he thought, a nostalgic pang in his heart. Invincible.
A trip to Publix followed. He noted his changing relationship with food. Gone were the days of indulgent comfort eating. Now, he prioritized healthy choices, limiting carbs, and increasing his vegetable intake. His bulk purchases of fish, though economical, had led to a monotonous diet. He hoped to find more variety, more inspiration in the kitchen. Back home, he felt a sense of quiet satisfaction. He had spent his day well. He had walked, he had saved money, he had resisted the pull of aimless scrolling. Social media had not held its usual allure. He knew now that a few posts a week were sufficient, that he didn’t need to perform for an audience. Fewer people engaged with his content these days, and he was strangely at peace with that.
He thought back to the early days, to his excitement at discovering Linux, the joy of building his own computers from spare parts, the sheer exhilaration of learning. The internet had once felt like a vast, unexplored territory, full of promise and possibility. Now, it seemed more like a stage, a place for carefully curated personas. People chase followers, not fulfillment, he mused. He hadn’t learned to code for likes and shares. He had learned to build, to create, to understand. The web had transformed from a frontier for thinkers to a carnival for performers.
In this new chapter of his life, he found himself drawn to older, more solitary pursuits. He recalled his childhood notebooks, filled with stories and poems that he had never dared to share. Writing had never been about fame or recognition. It had been a refuge, a way to make sense of the world. The computer, too, had originally entered his life as a tool for writing. Now retired, and with little to show in the way of tangible achievements, he felt no regret. Instead, he felt a profound sense of release. Anonymity had become a comfortable cloak. His work no longer needed to impress, it only needed to be true.
Yesterday’s laptop upgrade and short reel on knee exercises had felt productive. Today, he had meditated, walked, and returned to his personal diary. He toyed with the idea of turning these entries into fiction, sharing them on his old blog, even if no one read them. Later, perhaps, he would revisit his abandoned Node.js project, the one he had left untouched since 2021. It would be like starting over, but this time, it would be for himself and for the Spirit who listened in the quiet spaces of his heart.
2025-06-08 21:05:48
popong