Haribol, anxiety

Most people don’t know that I have an anxiety disorder. I feel like standing on an edge of a ravine every time I have to drive alone or take a commute in a public transport. I just don’t want to be left alone with my mind. My mind drives me nuts. Most of the time I drive with someone, I commute with someone etc. Yeah, I had a major depression about it like “O, woe is me, I can’t drive alone; I can’t ride the train, I can’t ride the bus, so on. How will I travel the world? How will I attend conventions? How will I become just a normal guy in the movies who drives on a vast highway in the desert into the unknown?.”  And that may be one my problems, I keep wanting to be like an idea of a person my mind creates for me. The best thing about my situation though is that, despite this “handicap” I don’t really feel I am deprived of life. (Ok I can’t do certain things, but so with most “normal” people;  I can’t drive alone—well some people don’t know how to drive at all, and they don’t really need to.) The best thing about this is that after feeling so low and inferior, I was able to learn to appreciate the graces raining down on me each day in the form of family, friends and the sweet love of Our Lord. (If I were in a different situation, with my arrogance, I may even think I am God!) The best thing is that I have learned—despite forcefully bent down--humility and gratitude in this life. I have learned to accept the things I have, and let go of those things I can’t have. I will not be able to realize these things on my own without the compassion of a friend who showed me who I really am. Having learned from his teacher the process of transcending anxieties in this world, he was able to guide me through my suffering.  I don’t know where I will be without my dear teacher who unselfishly shared to me the path through this existence. I hold on to what he said and here I pass on to you:

“A person can only be truly happy, truly satisfied, when he is tasting love for God. The easiest way to come to that platform of love for the Lord is by regularly hearing and chanting His Holy Names.”  

God is one but with infinite number of names. Allah. Jehova. Yaweh. Krishna. Father. All of these names are invested with His transcendental power. God has made it so easy to approach Him that we can actually experience being with Him, being with the source of happiness, peace and satisfaction, simply by singing or chanting His names.

Jesus Christ said that His greatest commandment is that one should love the Supreme Lord with all his heart, mind, body and entire being. And like unto it, love others.

We are not our body. Nor we are our mind which is the reservoir of our fear and anxieties. We are the soul within this body. Satisfying the body or the mind will only bring us temporary happiness. Making the body and mind happy is like making your clothes happy, for the mind and body are exactly that: the material clothing of our spiritual soul. You, the spirit cannot be happy with material things, like a fish out of water cannot be happy when you put him in a bar or a carnival. The spirit can only be happy with spiritual food, and the food for the soul is love for the Supreme soul, like fish returning to sea.

Our help is in the Names of the Lord said the bible. This is a form of help when no one seems to be able to help. No other hand except God’s can reach the deepest recesses of your heart when it is in fear. And the transcendental sound vibration of God’s Names is His hand reaching out to us.

One day, I will be faced with a situation where I will be driven to the end my strength—beyond driving alone, beyond walking alone along the aisle of a bus. Should that day come, in the form of death or some other predicament, there will be fear, but I pray that I’ll be at my weakest, that I will lose all grip to my false idea that I have the power to control my life to make it better, and in this way be able to fully surrender in love the reins of my body, mind and entire being to Him Whose Love holds the universes together! Haribol, chant the Names of God and be happy!

NOTE TO SELF WHILE JOGGING IN PLACE

First off my sur name doesn't sound Spanish-enough, I'm not sure what it sounds like, so I guess I don't deserve a shred of apology from the people who intentionally or due to inevitable stupidity out of aural unfamiliarity, misspelled my dear name on certificates, anthologies, toilet cubicles and other public documents. Another indelible proof would be some of my poor professors' half a sem struggle to commit my name to their memories. Furthermore or moreover and in relation to that, almost everyone I know knows a joke or two about what my name sounded like. Well, where the hell does my name come from anyway is as pointless as what the hell does it mean. Why can't I have a normal Cruz or Santos or Santacruz. Mr. Jesus nailed on a Cruz.

I live in a city, barely. A doubtful title, a title entangled to a lot of excuses such as "component city" or "class B" city, etc. So I guess it's a city by default--a 'why not?' inspired reasoning concocted by the rising aesthetics of beauty pageants borne from the very mouths of todays glutathione inspired muses of the masses. Something to do with politics and business, I guess. Somehow, we are licensed to blame everything to politics and business, the business of politics, the political business, so on and so forth. Anyway, it's same as having a title. It pays more to have a dr. or a bunch of abbreviated ego-boosters next to your name. I guess, welcome to our city attracts more asses to shit investments than you are entering a municipality. Everybody knows that the word town is almost a synonym of boredom. So I'm here in a barely-city town, in a district by the sea, in one of the poorest regions of this poor nation. Talk about poorest of the poor. Where the hell does poor come from anyway, so I can probably invent a word that says "poorer than poor." 

From the TV I can hear the news of the day. 6th place in the SEA games. I'm tired of wondering or being surprised. How do I explain this? Indonesia leads because it's a bigger country--a Chinese analogy of epic breadth--more people, more athletes to choose from--I can see this segueing into the joke of every Chinese person jumping at the same time tilting the world. A feasible consolation which may earn nods and likes in inferior sport threads and forums, only here comes Singapore. Sigh. Richer then, more steroids? What?! Better gyms, more muscular guys.  I guess our country can better boast in anything but rankings. I saw UP slip down to obscure ranks in the Universities in the world; I heard the caves in Palawan didn't make it to the 7 new wonders of nature; our beauty queens will win only by internet voting. Ofcourse we had lost some, but we also won some--like the internet voting thing. So, okay if that's how it's going to be the start of a chicken or egg debate.

Another daub of salt would be that I write and think in a language three levels down. There's English, there's Tagalog and then my language. Within the language, a sub-contest of dialects, and guess what, the dialect I write and think in is the less popular dialect of the less popular language. What did I ever do to be so--defeated? Loser, you'd agree would be the more precise term.

Maybe I've held on too long to Dylan's prophesy that the loser now will be later to win, or maybe the times aren't changing at all. Yeah, I guess I'm leaving out a lot of happier days, but I guess when you're doing something as unnatural as jogging in place, not to mention stupid, out of the gym context, say in your father's office, where I am now, you don not become optimistic at all. And you use a lot of "I guess", I guess.

So now I jog in place, panting, watching things around me. Excited about the realization. I jog in place thinking about progress, thinking that I guess I should win something--while the horizon of a wall and barbed wire remains as sure as there will be bloody mutilations in New Year's eve. My minutes are almost done. I've done something, I don't really like, but badly needed to be done. Afterall, it happens to be the dawn of the age of health in my little community. You see, more and more people 'happens' to be dying of heart attacks, crippled by stroke, blinded by diabetes--it's the rage; in panic, the survivors walk, run, bike around town, saving themselves with their running shoes and mountain bikes. Maybe I'll jog in place more. That's what it is said in the fitness site: workout some more. The only thing good about losing all the time, and finally accepting it as destiny, birthright, is that victory comes without even trying to win. You learn to keep yourself from giving a damn about those gold stars and 1's and line of nines, like keeping your hands off of that extra helping of that greasy excuse of a meal. I feel for Pacquiao, it must've sucked big time for him that after working his ass off in training just to give Marquez a decent beating, and succeeded, it still wasn't good enough. Fuck, I'm a minute past my target time, and giving all I've got. My lungs are aching, my left calf is on the brink of cramping, I can feel my knee joints crumbling like bread crumbs, and I hate my fugly reflection on the glass windows, but the sweat feels good, it reminds me of a long-winding wild sex in a suffocating room, a vindication, a promise that after all this work,  I will feel good. I deserved it, every bit of it.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 9

OM

On Love and Separation

Instantly I was caught up in a meditative mood (aka staring blankly into space) as I mentally pushed the pause button in the universe to assess certain feelings from the days very different from this present. It was the morning I faced the classic dilemma of whether there really is a difference between loving someone because of need, and needing someone because of love. I was readying myself for work, and as if on cue, an anxiety gripped me: will I make it even a day without the wife? She was leaving for Manila in a few days. The first time we will not be travelling as a family. The first problem would be Radha, although its actually the maid's problem, but emotionally will I be able to subdue her when she finds out that her mother has been gone for a dubious length of time? Will I be able to do the things, whatever they are, her mother does? And a few other personal and silly worries cut-off from the norms.

Our marriage hasn't been on a Pamela Anderson and Tommy Lee on their first sex basis. It's more like the silence during New Year after all the fireworks had been fired. It's a phase. But this is not about that. This is about separation. Not divorce, but love in separation. That is my problem. I am the biggest crier over spilt milk. No, we are not breaking up; both of us still has a lot of ammo to spare. It's just the sadness...maybe it was the weather the day she went away...or just my plain old deppy. But it's the shock of suddenly being pincered out of the routine you're kinda fed up with before. And this is not the first time I had felt this. She wasn't the only one.

I felt my first intense sadness when I was about four or five, and it was not for a girl (although after that, it will all be about that specie) but for my brother. When my mother was still working abroad as a nurse, me and my brother were brought to the separate care of our grandparents from both sides of the family. And we only get to see each other on weekends. This day meant a lot to me as I was mostly alone in a big, gray, and rough house filled with abaca fibers and piles of sacked palay, and grown ups and rice insecticides. I even remembered a skull, a real human skull in that house. So when my brother visits, its a good day for me. Sometimes he would sleep over and we'd play all day, and I'd make him cry and we'd draw or ride in tandem in my trike, and do brotherly stuff like wrestling and farting on each other's face. Then it would be time for him to go back to my other lola, and me and my father would take him there, and we would hide or give him Coke so that we can leave--those tricks to leave very young children. I don't know, if he'd cry or not after he finds out that we're gone--i will never know perhaps. I could ask him now, but that would be awkward. But what I will always know is the feeling I'd get when I return to the big house, and see our toys and the stuff we had drawn together, the creased bed where we had wrestled, even the cement floor which is impossible to mark bears a triad of brown tracks made by our weight on the tricycle. And yes, like what Annette Benin's character did in American Beauty after finding Kevin Spacy on a table with his cranial blood, I embraced my brother's blanket, his pillow, his soiled sweaty shirt, and maybe a little moisture in the eyes.

I can't explain it. But that morning I practiced. I stared at our bed, which I will not be sleeping on for a few days (I plan to stay in my parents house with Radha), and the same feeling came. The same childhood sadness without a tinge of weakness. And it went on until the day of her trip. We said our goodbyes, and I tried to appear strong, or else she will not go. The weather was the killer, it was a Velvet Underground "Perfect Day" day. We made Radha sleep, and then she headed for the terminal. I wrote her this poem a few minutes after she left:

Kan Pagpa-Manila Mo, Agom.

Kan naghali ka, naghagad su mga bagay na sinda maanan ki maray.
Nakaduko sinda gabos, arog an nangangadying may pighahalat.
Ngonian sana itinuga kan isip na dai taka kayang wara,
na haloy, na dai ka mag-uli diyan-diyan na banggi.
Ata an sakuyang katanosan muya nang sumusog saimo,
ta ining lawas na nagpupugol saiya dai nang padumanan.
Kun pwede sanang dai na umabot an banggi— pero mas ngana
ining hapon, na ruminokrukon sa lumlom
garo mag-gadanon, nakasuklob ki itom.
Dulo pa akong dai pahangoson kan dampog
na nagsasarabod-sabod.

Pero, maabot an banggi, buda mahibi an mga burak ki hamot na makayugtuon.
Garo su ulok mo kan enot kitang nagmidbidan.
Pag-iyan ngani umagi sa sakuyang pangiturugan, diyan-diyan
baka dagos nang mautsan.
Hulyo 27, 2008. Karangahan.

Salin:
Nuong Nag-Manila Ka, Mahal

Nung umalis ka, hiningi ng mga bagay na masdan silang mabuti.
Nakayuko lahat, tulad ang nananalanging may inaantay.
Ngayon lang inamin ng isipan na hindi kita kayang wala,
na matagal, na hindi ka uuwi mamayang gabi.
Ay, ang aking katinuan, nais nang humabol saiyo,
pagkat itong katawan na pumipigil sa kanya'y wala nang papupuntahan.
Kung pwede lang na di na dumating ang gabi--ngunit higit
tong hapon, na nauupos sa lilim
wari'y agaw-buhay, nakatalukbong ng itim.
Muntik akong di pahingahin ng ulap
na nagkabuhol-buhol.
Ngunit, darating ang gabi, at iiyak ang mga bulaklak ng bango na
makabagbag damdamin.
Parang yung ngiti mo nung una tayong magkakilala.
Kung yan pa ang dadaan sa aking panaginip, mamaya
baka tuluyan nang malagutan ng hininga.

Do I love her so I need her or do I need her that's why I am loving her? Frankly I can't tell. People at this stage, speak in things, little unpoetic things. I don't want to waste my days with her with this love-need stuff. Needing is bad because it's selfish and settling, but sometimes, to accept that we need someone is the first step to selflessness. For example, surrender to God is to accept that we need Him, and only Him. It's hard to say when you are using or loving someone--but the best way to tell is, forgive the cliche, when they're gone.

Appendix. Love in Separation
In the Vedas, it is said that the highest form of love for God is Love in Separation. This was expressed by the Gopis (cow herd women) in Vrindavan when they fell in love with Krishna. While yogis meditate and do rigorous sacrifices and difficult yoga poses to see Vishnu, the Gopis, together with the people of Vrindavan, are very fortunate to be able to see the Supreme Personality of Godhead Sri Krishna and live, play, eat, and even dance with Him. The Gopis are always anxious to see and be with God, in this way their whole life is spent by dreaming of the Lord, and in so doing become perfectly God-conscious. They left their household chores and husbands to be with Him, because they always feel that they would die without seeing His beautiful face. Sometimes, Krishna or God make us feel that He is not with us, for us to yearn for Him more. To teach us to grow more in love with Him. In fact, the very reason we are here in this material world full of suffering, death, diseases, old age, heart breaks, doubt and misery and even the drowning feeling of birth is because we do not love God...but rather we love ourselves. We are free here to love ourselves to be the enjoyer of things that we don't own, and this world is made just for that--this world is paradise for our bodies...but God gives us the chance that somehow with our intelligence we will realize how lonely this place is, that after all the pleasure we get out of sex, drugs, food, and leisure, we will look for a greater purpose. That we will begin to compare ourselves with dogs, and say I am not like that. While it is only with the human body will we be able to return home, back to Godhead, it would be tragic if we live like animals...for God is like a wish tree, He can grant everything our heart desires. And so our bodies are the consequence of those desires.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 8

OM

On The Holy Name

If God has a name, what would it be? asked Joan Osborne in a song which was great for a while.
Perhaps before I was even born a name had already been planned for me. I was given the names Jaime and Jesus, from my father’s name and the name of the God whom he believes in. Jimple was the other name I acquired while growing up, it is easily the combination of Jim and Paul glazed with a little sugar. In school, teachers coldly called me Jaime, and classmates depending on intimacy referred to me as either Jim or Pol.


But having three to four names is nothing compared to those which usually start with Maria. Usually when these girls are learning to write they must have required two sheets of paper: one for their name and the other for the actual writing exercise. And no matter how long their names were, they or other people somehow end up giving them/themselves a new and shorter nick.
We somehow understand that the longer the name a person has, the bigger he is or his parents are. This practice may have been a few of those feudal legacies from our colonial past.


Names are usually given to describe the individual, say Lovely or Makisig. Sometimes they identify the person’s origin like Jackson, Markson, or Johnson. Maria, Christy or Peter are commonly ripped off from scripture hoping the “named” will somehow share the virtue of the name. And some parents choose the weirdest names for their children for them to develop personality by being different, Harry Balls and Zach O’Balls are examples.


Nowadays when even the standard unique names, are slowly becoming exhausted, especially if your name is the reflection of your parent’s laziness or lack of imagination, and you find a hard time signing up to internet accounts using your typical name, we tend to name ourselves with Slick, Cool, or Pasaway depending on how we see ourselves.


So as a response to Ms. Osborne’s inquiry, first, I guess if Maria Cecilia Veronica etcetera which is an insignificant speck in the universe outside Forbes Park, can have such quantity of names, it would be a drag for the Lord of the Universe to just be simply referred to as G-O-D, second, God does have a name, and if my classmate from kinder had one that resembled a line in an iambic pentameter poem, God has something like a telephone directory of names that refers to Him. We’re talking about millions, in this particular planet alone, within this universe.


And if person is named Maria Cecilia, or Slick or Ice Cold 3000, to show opulence, personality or individuality, God is called in the same manner as:


-Jehova, Yahweh, El-shadday (God of the Mountains, Almighty), Elroi (God that sees me).


-In Islam, there’s a book called, The 99 Names of Allah, which includes such Names as Ar-rahim (the Merciful), Al-Malik (The Sovereign Lord), Al-Quddus (He who is free from all error, absent-mindedness, incapability and all kinds of defect).


-From our culture we have Kagurangnan (Oldest), Maykapal (Creator) Panginuon (Lord), Bathala.


-And in Vaisnava faith, where God’s names are regularly chanted Govinda (The origin), Krishna (All attractive), Hrshikesha (Master of the senses) are few.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 8

OM

On Suffering

The most abundant thing in the world is suffering. People go around marketing this place as a beautiful spot (like in travelogues)--today or when the time comes(e.g. last judgement when this world will be transformed into paradise)--and exactly like in travelogues, it miserably falls short with our expectations. You only need to see a child being born, helplessly covered in goo and blood, struggling for his first breath of air--more like drowning in this new atmosphere--out of the comfortable water of his mother's womb, to realize this. We celebrate birth as if it's the happiest day for a human being, when in fact it is the opposite--it's actually the day he will start to suffer.

This may appear simple cynicism or that I am looking at the glass of water half-empty, but that's not the worse part of it. It's not even the cynicism or the negative perception about life in this world which is the matter here, it's the ignorance that we are suffering and by further twisting it as pleasure. So we throw off parties birthday after birthday as we "live" another year, which if you look through the facade of the festive spirit all that is there is death moving in (In Kurusawa's film Madadayao it's expressed as "Not yet! Not yet! Huraaah!"). Saintly persons stated that no one which is born will escape death, and the fools' reaction to this is "well then let's make the best of it and have fun". Carpe Diem is a phrase mentioned a lot whenever topics like these are brought up. Seize the day. And it is a sound advice. Live as if there is no tomorrow. It will now depend on how you live it. People live their lives via different manners. Some live to jump off planes; some to cruise the waves; some to be in the 100 club others in the 10 club, and eventually to be the 1 club; some live for their pets; some for their art and music; etcetera. All in the name of feeling good. I feel good having people worship me for my art, I feel good having people worship me for my body, so on and so forth.

But this feeling of "goodness" always seem to be just like chewing gum. The mind-blowing sweetness is only during the first chew. Or in smoking, the best flavor is always in the first drag. So you chew and you chew and you puff and puff, looking for that taste. But its fleeting. You can only grab it for a time, and after that its gone again. And it's a bummer, a hassle. Why can't there be an everlasting gum? Or an orgasm multiplied to the millionth level? And this is a sound question.

But even if this fleeting nature of material pleasure is the one that gives us suffering, we never seem to stop doing it again, entering the chain of pain, over and over. It's not sadomasochism, we are not attracted to the pain, it's the opposite, we want pleasure. Our bodies are meant to suffer: birth, old age, diseases, death, all of these are the consequence of having a material body. But because we are not our bodies, it's impossible for us to stop hankering for pleasure even if our bodies are already beat. Because as spirit we are naturally full of pleasure, intelligence and bliss. And from where we come from the conditions suffered by our bodies are absent. That's why all these pain is artificial to us; that's why we are torn.

Going back to the orgasm multiplied to infinity question, it's a sound inquiry for it is possible. In other scriptures, it is said that our world, the material world is a perverted reflection of the spiritual dimension. All the pleasure here is an approximation of the pleasure in that plane. And being former residents of a place where suffering is non-existent it is but natural for us to be wracked by what we are experiencing here.

I don't agree with embracing suffering. We can only go so far as verbalizing it, and that's it. We can understand it, like why am I suffering? Why is there suffering? And that again is a very sound question, it's the beginning of enlightenment. We don't belong here, we should only be here for a while...like in a hotel, you don't give a fuss about decorating your room in a hotel, you do not furnish it with permanent stuff. You will be leaving it after a few days. Suffering shouldn't be accepted as natural, although it is natural in this material world, for we are not natural here, we aren't supposed to be here, our natural home is in the spiritual realm where there is only bliss and pleasure. Scriptures say that we aren't supposed to be suffering here in the first place. But we are here, because we wanted to be "free" with our enjoyment, we want our own scene, we don't want to be part of somebody's entourage so we are here. You weren't born in this world because God liked you to be born, no, it's becuase you wanted to be god.

The suffering in the world is actually God's mercy to us fallen souls. God reminds us with each pain we suffer of our real eternal position, and that is to be in a loving relationship with God. The world is an illusion, God made it so, for us to fully "enjoy" our desire to lord over. But in the long run we will get only pain out of this desire to sever our selves from Krishna. Because a hand that wants to enjoy by himself when severed from the body is a dead hand.

Suffering is in this world, we cannot run away from it, we cannot change it, the only thing we could do is to rekindle this loving relationship with God, and avoid being reborn in this world.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 7

Back in college, I used to like a lot of people, from a far. From a distance, so to speak, I obviously am ignorant about their lives, likes or dislikes or perks, etc...so to create this convincing image of them in my day-dream-drenched mind, I would dress them up with all sorts of fictional stuff. Like she might be a lonely, rich girl in a big white house in some sub-urban niegbhorbood, writing in her journal all day...and often times I would be knocking at her door, two sorrows meeting at last, all that mush or she's just plain lonely like me, and we need each other. I used to repeat that dream wherever I go, inside the classroom, in the bus, before I go to sleep, and especially when I'm scribbling stuff in my notebooks. And in that little world of a dream, a real dream of being with that dream person always seem to rise up above the little other dreamlets.

Once I really did end up being with a dream person. I celebrated it like a holiday. Fun, fun, fun, joy, joy, joy. I dove into this person, everything about this person I meticulously caressed with the voracity of a medieval scholar. And I was very good at this...but nothing is there that resembled the dream I juggled inside my head. The reality of this person is someone I don't know...and made me back off a bit. But then I surrendered myself to love. Perhaps love will make it okay, and create for me out of this new person, a new dream. But instead, I only got reality dancing in my face. Our bodies gave up but our passion was crazy. We knew nothing but to please each other. Afterwards it was just plain exhausting. And degrading. Nothing is there but the delicious feeling of doing it again, and again and again...ad infinitum. Looking back now, it's funny that we haven't really talked like real persons...for the mere meeting of our eyes, would make our clothes drop, and we are there again, like "mechanical rabbits from hell." Machines.

My dorm mates would treat me like somekinda Sexgod or something, and they all wanted to be like me, and to join in their banter I would say yeah, but at lights off I feel like shit...
The worse position, I have learned, is that where you have everything but still feel you have nothing...beat that.

I was wrong back then to falsely identify myself as the body. We all want to be happy, and pleasure is the number one thing that gives us happiness. So I feed the body with its pleasure thinking that by doing that I, the body, will be happy. But as I felt rotten as ever after all the beds I wrecked, there must be something wrong with me, perhaps I'm just dead-plain depressed, or that I am feeding myself the wrong stuff.

It's like feeding your fish with cake or chocolate. Or it's like a fish out of water...gasping feeling like shit...and you brought it to a concert...still gasping...you shot gunned it with high grade dobbie...still gasping...you brought a beautiful prostitute to sit on it...still gasping. Maybe putting it back to the sea would help. I felt like this all the time until I discovered who I am. I am not this lump of matter of bones and flesh, Aham Brhamasmi, I am spirit. And knowing who I am, I know what will make me Happy. Being minute spirits in this universe happiness for us would be to be reconnected to the Supreme Spirit in love.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 6

On Seeing Zeitgeist

Om

There is a belief that the spiritual can never be perceived by our material senses. For example if one opens up a body and look for the soul, he will not find it. But the existence of the soul cannot be disputed in the strength of this practical fact of dissection. For example initially radio waves are so faint that to our naked senses they practically don’t exist and only after special instruments detect them we believe in radio waves.

In the film religion was tried, in the scales of the senses, ie. archeology, anthropology, and other sciences founded upon observation and experimentation as the sole methods of proof. The film “preached” that the most popular figure of modern religion, Jesus Christ, His life and His teachings, is a rip-off from an ancient character in Egyptian myth, and “terrifyingly” similar (as how the film tried to present it) with Dionysius, Mithra, and Krishna. Mithras killed a bull to release its life force for the benefit of humanity, Dionysius had a cult of eating “flesh” and drinking of “blood”, and Krishna, according to the film had a virgin birth, and had 12 disciples, comprising some of the main arguments of the documentary. At first glance the arguments were overwhelming, makes you involuntarily nod your head in agreement, but then, you begin to look for where these facts were taken and the illusion crumbles.

Like the “Historical Jesus”, Krishna is also viewed by the science of taking down history as a mere figure in, guess where, history. In the film Zeitgeist, Jesus was not even a “figure” in History. The film-makers assert that He wasn't’t there, was never there, and the Christians have been engaging themselves in 2000 years of worshiping an imaginary friend. If the worship of Krishna would have been as immediate as the worship of Jesus, the Lord would have suffered a similar offense. Offense or no offense however, the film nonetheless presented false information about the Supreme Lord.

In the film religion was tried, in the scales of the senses, ie. archeology, anthropology, and other sciences founded upon observation and experimentation as the sole methods of proof, yet it was still unable to do it right. It failed to gather the correct information—in its own arena it can’t even absolutely claim truth. What more with the Spiritual?

A scientist-devotee once asked Bhaktivedanta Swami about the reality of evolution and the existence of dinosaurs. His Divine Grace stated that the presence or the absence of fossils, bones or dirt of a certain species does not absolutely establish the truth about dinosaurs or that we came from apes. Jesus according to the film was not recorded in any document, at the time of His supposed appearance, therefore for them it is safe to conclude that He is imaginary.

It is our natural tendency to rely on our senses, that’s why in a dark room it is the anxiety rather than the darkness which madden us.

It is illusion, of our supremacy, of our being Lord over everything, that makes us regard our senses, our minds as perfect. But it’s easy to see that they are not. First, we weren't there, and second, we have to rely, on a matter of life and death, to the accounts of those who were there or what they had left in books, stones or art. So what right do we have to approach the superior with our inferior means? We can never overcome the steepness of God. That’s why God has to come down, as a form of His mercy. That’s why all we have is a thing called faith. Faith not with the material that makes up cathedrals and mosques, but the simple faith of a child “believing” a picture presented to him by his mother telling him that, “Here is your Father”.


Without faith there is no religion. I cannot say that everything is not science, for science in its most basic form is present in everything. Religion is science, the unfortunate end is that science has not a tinge of religion. Religion in a sense of getting close to God, the ultimate X of science.

I wrote this because I am hurt, as I am not yet strong. I have to say I am still thinking like a mental speculator. My mind is restless, it’s very easy for it to believe in the non-existence, rather than in the existence of God, and His devotees, for it wants itself to be God. And that is my tragedy.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 5

Last night my wife left me, due to my supposed “extreme” practices. I came home from a sadhana-bhakti (devotional service) lecture to see certain things missing from our house: namely, my wife’s majority of clothes, Radha’s pet hamster, her clothes, and other things.

My “extreme” activities in this case are: quitting smoking, alcohol, TV and movies, no illicit sex, no loose association, no porn in the internet (or porn period), worshiping God’s deity everyday, chanting on japa beads fourteen rounds a day. I don’t blame her, these things really look weird to a lot of people. A lot of times, she told me that I was loosing my mind.

In a letter she left, she told me, she’s sick with my lifestyle, my spiritual life in other words. She wanted the old Jimple back.

But she didn’t know what the old Jimple was.

I was kinda expecting this to happen. A few days from last night, she set up different beds for us, a few more days from that she wasn’t on a talking basis with me, meaning she answered me with complete silence whenever I ask her or tell her something...a few more days or maybe months from that she had loosely thrown at me insults and tiger-looks. And if we regress more from this instance, beyond the time I decided to try for the second time to practice this kind of “life”, it would be hideous.

Although I have not cheated on her physically, I cheated on her repeatedly in my mind, I had associated with people whom she’ll not be very happy to find out. I was slowly being consumed by my old lusts...I don’t know how long I could hold myself back. And I was wallowing in my frustration. I want to do it just to find out how it would feel, but then I knew I won’t be happy afterwards. I’ve had my share of women, and the experience was great the few hours before, during and after the activity. “I may sleep with all the women in the world but it won’t make me happy” this thought never occurs to me though, while I’m feverish with desire. It would only come after I came and guilt settles in. I’ve had an empty and lonely life.

Sometimes I would fight the urge to watch porn and touch myself or something, but I still end up doing it. Sometimes I think that maybe don’t love my wife anymore for doing this. But this has nothing to do with love. No matter how we sugar-coat it sex is sex and lovemaking is just icing on the same stale cake. Defeat after defeat, I began losing respect with myself. I don’t know who I am anymore.

These are the things that came to me when on the phone my wife asked me to be my old self. I thought I’d rather just disappear. A life of lust and fear, that was the old Jimple. I am dragged like a mule by my senses, and it’s not okay. I look okay to people, nice job, great achievements, popular, but I felt like Lucky.

And this was not the first. When we were still an unmarried couple, she also pulled an act like this. She broke up with me the first time I practiced this lifestyle. When I took up smoking and drinking again, we were back fine.

It’s not her fault. My wife is not perfect but she’s a good person. And most of all, I love her. Though I wish everything will be easy, and she wishes everything would be smoother if I like find myself a person who can stand up with my lifestyle, I won’t buy that. She’s the only wife I’m going to have, though I won’t be too arrogant to dictate this destiny. But I don’t need to bother with another person. All I can do is pray, that my wife hopefully receive a certain mercy from Krishna, from God, that would give her vision of what I’m really trying to do. This is not some spiritual acrobatics which I am doing for my false ego’s whim. This is real. This is how I believe man should live, if he wants to sincerely develop a relationship with God. And this is what I want. I want the best thing in life. And that is God. If God is not real, then I have not lost anything— hell wouldn’t be so different than a place without God.

My wife has certain issues about my wanting to love God. She is anxious that if my heart is filled with Krishna, that it won’t have a place for her. Her thinking kinda reminded me of this popular belief that in order to love God we have to love our selves first or the extensions of our selves, namely, family, friends, neighbor. If that is true then, most people should have been God-lovers by now. No, love God first, that was what Jesus said, “my first and foremost commandment is that you love God with all your heart, with all your mind, and all your being and like unto it love others”.

Boiling it down, I look at this as a chance to surrender to God. I can’t control certain things in my life, much less my wife. This is the point where I say: Bahala ka na Krishna. I am nothing. Protect me.

Haribol!

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 4

On Education

It is said that it is better to live like an animal than to teach nescience. For so-called teachers of this sort are described like snakes with jewels on top of their heads. They are a more efficient killer than the ordinary snake--for they are attractive.

Recently, people were subjected to unnecessary anxiety when a group of scientists inaugurated the operation of an expensive machine system called Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons or lead, at very high speeds. The ultimate goal of the said machine is for the study of a certain hyphotetical particle called the Higgs boson. 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries as well as hundreds of universities and laboratories, participated in this experiment which cost billions of dollars. Is this the goal of education?

The goal of real education should be the eradication of the four sufferings in the material realm: birth, old age, disease, and death. Also, the attainment of true happiness. If someone can provide this, then he or she is eligible to teach.

What do you want to be?
During my time, we would unanimously answer "Doctor." And when asked why, we would say, "because we want to cure the sick, we want to help people..." so on and so forth. And parents would be proud, relatives would be proud, friends would be proud, for the future doctor. During my time, doctors were the big earners. They were also the big spenders: big house, fine clothes, grand piano, swimming pool, car etc. So, we all wanted to be doctors, but hospital life never crossed our minds...we were doctors in our mansion and red sports car. This is what is being taught in most of our schools. Graduate and be someone; be someone then spend a lot of money. But then doctors aren't necessarily happy. Being a doctor doesn't guarantee happiness, neither does living in a mansion or driving a sports car give us endless bliss. So this education fails, and as it teaches us false happiness, this is the education of nescience.

But it doesn't mean that because our so-called education failed to provide us happiness, that true happiness does not exist. It does exist in several symptoms, one of which is the transcendence of the four material suffering (birth, old age, disease and death). Transcending these material miseries, will quench our anxieties for our selves and our loved ones. When this anxieties are gone we will have peace...and then happiness.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 3

The law of conservation of energy states that energy may neither be created nor destroyed.
Everything in this world is the product of some previous form of energy. A plant takes energy from the sun and bears fruit. The fruit is taken by an animal, and transforms it into action or a tangible product such as stool or hair growth. This energy then goes someplace else, to a bar of soap or cosmetics, or to the creamer you used this morning. Nothing is wasted said one, to another its like everything here in this world has been already utilized by someone.

Recycling is natural in the material realm. And even before people came up with the idea of re-using certain things like paper and bottle, we were already using used stuff. If we believe in the Law that energy is neither created nor destroyed then we have to agree with what is said in Scripture that the energy in this dimension does not decrease or increase and is constant in quantity, thereby causing us to take what was already taken, to chew what has been chewed by a previous entity.

In elementary I acquired this nasty habit of feeling the underparts of desks, looking for a certain gummy stuff some kid pasted there. And I sometimes dare myself to actually peel it off and chew on the hardening gum to find out if there's still some sweetness left in there. I never thought later in life that I don't need to feel under desks and tables of every school or movie house to satisfy this craving, and wince in the end, for I'm already doing that even before I learned to chew gum, even before I even acquired teeth.

Imagine chewing gum: This kinda makes sense why people say that they are never contented with anything...they like the sweetness of a certain food, chew chew chew, art, chew, chew, chew, religion, relationships, sex, chew chew chew, then the sweetness is gone. "But, that's natural...life is like that!" someone told me. As if he never craved for an everlasting gum.

The worse part in this imperfect life is to settle, or to simply say life is bitter. True, the world is full of suffering, but I think it's not a reason for us "not" to crave for something which is really, perfectly solid, happy perfect stuff. In fact, even the bitterest of persons still crave in their deepest thoughts perfection. Someone taught me that we are perfect. It's just that we can't see the effulgence of that perfection due to our contact with matter, like a shinny object buried in mud. Perfection is when we are cleansed of this dirt. We look for perfection, because our love is real, our love is for the supremely perfect. Yet when we translate this into a material conclusion, i.e. perfect husband, perfect boyfriend, perfect pet, perfect parents or children, we end up tasting the blandness of an already chewed gum.

When asked who he wish to see in the afterlife, a Chinese socialist doctor answered Chairman Mao. This doctor has surrendered his life to Mao Tse-tung, his idea of a perfect person. And when further asked why Chairman Mao, despite his "perfection" still has to chain-smoke, and suck pleasure out of cigarettes, the guy looked around and whispered, "Yeah, seven packs a day, actually."

A perfect person is self-satisfied, he does not chew what has already been chewed. Such persons are compared to swans who are not interested in consuming what is sucked by flies from stool, but drink only the nectar of lotuses. They are called Paramahamsa or realized souls, which can separate what is real and what is not. To serve and follow such realized souls and spiritual masters can purify our dirtied hearts and reveal our true effulgence, making our lives perfect.

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 2

Or On Saving Loved Ones

Worse than you yourself dying would be the dying of your loved ones. Most of us suffer great anxiety over this matter. This morning while I was sitting in my usual spot in the garden, chanting on my beads, my daughter's death passed my mind. I wondered whether I can handle the loss. On other times, when a thought like this would disturb me, I would say to myself repeatedly that it won't happen yet, sooner or later but not yet. That morning, I realized how futile and helpless such positive thinking was. Death will come anytime--either to me, my daughter, my wife, friends, anyone.

It will hit us beyond our imagination, beyond any pain we have ever experienced. It will hit the dying and those surrounding him with suffering. But no matter how inevitable this occurrence is, (and we know, but we deny it) we try with all our might to rebel against dying. But what can we really do? About death...nothing; but at the time of death, there is one thing you can do to help yourself or the ones you love to ease them or yourself from much suffering and bewilderment when you and they are leaving your and their body/ies.

Remember God. Take shelter in God. Surrender all your mind's and body's struggles to control, to make the pain go away, to counteract the fear of the unknown. I do not pray that my parents, my brothers, my wife and daughter to live forever, rather I pray that I'll be at least there when they are splitting from their material shell, for I to at least sing to them the Names of Krishna, or read to them a passage from Bhagavad Gita assuring them that there is no need to fear death, for death will come only to the body, but not to the self...that no one can help them, not medicines, not their bank accounts or their PH. D.s no one not even the love of the persons who care for them, but God alone Who is the true shelter.

I believe that our forgetfulness of our body's demise makes it possible for us to enjoy the world and forget what really matters. In every wake and burial, people would say he (referring to the dead) could have done something more...or she could have done something other than working like a mule...etc.

A friend told me he's "sorta" trapped in a life he wanted to "taste" first before surrendering to God. And I wish for him Lord's mercy, which in my case was in a form of my crippling disease of anxiety. Like Queen Kunti, a great devotee of God, who prayed for more suffering to constantly make her take shelter in Krishna, I accept my case as God's bite of comfort. He promised in the Gita that all those who surrender unto Him will go to Him, without fail. Another favorite example would be from the pastime of Jesus Christ and the good thief, who asked Lord Jesus to give him shelter after he leaves his body. Our mood of surrender should resemble this thief's, who felt he is unworthy, lower than a straw in the street. In such a state of mind we can chant the Holy Names of the Lord constantly, and secure for us and our loved ones God's protection in the time of death. If you don't believe in God, lie to them, but be honest with what you can't do. Don't give them the false promise that you can give them shelter. Haribol Krishna!

Mind-work of the Most Fallen # 1

Or On A Death of a Young body
O

I.
This news came to me late yesterday afternoon, telling of a high schoolmate’s death by brain tumor. She was roughly thirty, probably having the best of her life in the nearby Australian continent. I just said “Ay, sus.”


It would have had a mellower effect should this news be told fifty years in the future. Deaths hit us most when it happens early; striking us always with chest-wrenching awe. This was one of those instances when a certain “clarity” falls over you like epiphany. Like a wiper running through moist windshield. And it was raining, gloomy, when this officemate related the news while struggling to open her umbrella, and we were tired as it was past 5, and it just added to the effect. It called forth a communal black phenomena. It’s as if something is not right, or dying young is a mistake. How can we explain it—it’s hard to explain. Hard in a sense that we are suddenly left hanging when we were always ahead of the “dead”, dying somewhere in her old age—or the natural manner of how death is supposed to be...and that is when her life is, must be, “through.”


I was saying something like “...we can never really plan certain things...” but the person to whom I was saying this, just left me point blank, back to her office to probably get another thing to cover herself with from the rain. What I was saying was: It’s really not for us to plan things. We don’t know anything in the end. And the end is simply the end of everything we can do, overcome or comprehend. I probably asked about how the parents were doing, and Precy’s answer was a bland raised shoulder, and a similarly gray stare at nothing.


It was my turn to brave the late afternoon “ambon” and sloshed down the street to the tricycle terminal.


I was in the padyak, singing Govindam Adi Purusham, when I repeated to myself that I may be lucky to Know. No, I am lucky to Know—what really transpired in this “heavy” incident. Cecile, the kind, as Precy poignantly remembered the dead in the middle of her news, is not in that box her family is taking home from the airport, she’s somewhere else in this drizzle. Her relatives are only taking home sadness, and the icon of their misery. And I thanked Radha and Govinda endlessly, by softly chanting their names as the padyak passed through silvery tenements, and night’s coming, that when this sadness comes to me sooner or later, I have a shelter.


A tiger kills and comforts with its mouth. It carries its cub to safety by seemingly “biting” it; similarly it hunts by pressing its teeth on the neck of its prey. The significance of this image is this: To the devotee, the “bite” of God is protection, to the non-devotee, it is death.
It does not mean that Death does not come to the devotee. Death comes to all. But as the devotee knows God’s names, God’s address, God’s nature, he knows Where to go and Who to approach. I guess these are the only means by which we can endure the experience of dying.

II.
With one bleak moment all of the happy memories of this place we call world is wiped out. Some of us calls this getting older or becoming wiser...but to those who are true, simply calls this misery. We wanted to live and be happy, instead what we get is sadness and death. We want to get rich and be comfortable, instead what we get are money problems and fatigue.


When I am in this tone people ask me, so what should we do? And I say, “know who you are” as our greatest teachers preach. If I am blind of what I am, I am only trying to enjoy the lightlessness in my eyes which obviously will not make me happy. There are a lot of things beyond just trying to live “happy” world-wise. Most people we know, dub themselves ”seekers.” They seek high and low for a little taste of bliss. And so it is our fate in this world. But isn’t it just logical, before looking for something, to know first to whom our object of search will be for? Is it for your mind, your body or for you, the soul within these bodies?


Once you know which “mouth” to feed, then you start seeking, for now you know what food you must sow and reap. Let us not waste time by trying to solve these mysteries with ourselves. Let us humbly accept our weaknesses and end mentally speculating what the universe is, what life is. The first step to a sensible life is to accept that we do not know, and from that sought a Guide, who knows.
But a guide should be bona fide. And a bona fide guide is one who has accepted a guide also, who also accepted a guide, so on and so forth, tracing back to God Himself. This is called disciplic succession, a teaching that comes down to us from the Supreme Source. This is the only way, teaching should be.


For example I can only reach where you are if you will give me your name, your address and certain information about yourself. Otherwise, no matter how hard I try to speculate who you are, what you are, I will never be able to reach you. The same with God. It is true that God and His servants walked this world, to give us these information. Jesus was one of the most known in the western world. But because of our unpurified hearts it was hard for us to recognize Him and His devotees. When Krishna appeared in this world He was defamed by envious persons as an ordinary man. And Jesus was even crucified.


It is simply true that those pure at heart should feel blessed, “for they will see God.” And our hearts will be purified only if it comes in contact with a purifier. God said in the Bhagavad Gita, that I am the Supreme Purifier, and because He is non-different from His Names, we should chant HARE KRISHNA HARE KRISHNA KRISHNA KRISHNA HARE HARE/ HARE RAMA HARE RAMA RAMA RAMA HARE HARE in our beads or through kirtan to be purified. This is the only way for this yuga or age:


Harer Nama Harer Nama Harer Namaiva kevalam kalua nasty eva nasty eva gathir anyata
“Chant the the Holy Names (of God), chant the Holy Names, chant the Holy Names, in this age of quarrel and confusion, there is no other way, there is no other way, there is no other way!”


--00--


Radha blessed me with this reminder on the very day of her Appearance. So I pray to Her, as I pray to my Spiritual Master, that She accept me as Her loving servant, that I may then be qualified to approach Her beloved Krishna, and be re-united with Him in loving devotion. Haribol!


September 8, 2008.

The Night When I Was A Living Dead

One of the things I'd learned from college that actually won over forgetfulness was that if you find it annoyingly hard to sleep at night, someone must be thinking of you. No, I didn't get this from a prof or from a reserved book at the Main Lib, but from a freshman blockmate Cecille. She used to experience it too or so she recounted, and end up calling up the person whom she thought was toying with her memory, and told them to knock it off.

True or not, I wondered, above the usual brewing of a nasty panic attack, who could be thinking of me at that unholy hour of 2 am; and in my mind I saw a gaping emptiness of a corridor. I almost made a crater on our bed from tossing and kicking, and trying to burry my legs to the soft, cold silken blankets which on usual nights lulls me to snoring oblivion, but not tonight.

Everyone on my bed was asleep, and even outside nothing could be heard. The worst part of sleepless nights is that it lets you dose off a little and then jolt you with an inexplicable terror, making you ten cups of caffeine awake again. Some people cry over insomnia, some do the weirdest stuff like taking a crap or jerking off, but for me there's only one thing left to be done. After trying to ignore the fact that one day I will have to do so, tonight maybe the day of surrender. From my little pouch bag I rummaged over coins, keys and my MP3 player for a little pill box. My emergency pill box. My miniature panic room-sanctuary. And there I succumbed to the chemical process.

It's not E for crying out loud, but rallying to be psychotic drugs-free is as important to me as having quit smoking just by simply wanting to. Taking the pill is just taking the pill, it's the higher statement which Im sore about. That I've given over to fear again, and so on and so forth.
In the morning I naturally felt worse; the consolation however was that I'm actually here in the office writing this, in spite of the terror and the floating feeling. I have to google hydroxyzine to find out how long the side effects wear off. Don't mind me.

At The Urinal

A love that is a little higher than loving one self would be loving the world.

Nothing is more easy. The world prizes love for the immortal, for the absolute, for the always; base, gross emotions are reserved for animals. But with the coming of certain thoughts of our own mortality, of our not being here forever of our not belonging here, I don't know if it was cheap sentimentality or a legitimate call from the source of all wisdom, that I felt a certain sorrow for all the insignificant things in this world.

It was sudden, while I was at the public urinal, recovering from my regular dose of anxiety attack: this pain, that this disease has so ruined my life, this will not be forever; I am going to miss this. And I felt a tingle run through my arms, as I hear senseless noises from outside, and see things without weight. The brutality of eternal eyes opening up shuts off my mundane senses, and ended the warmth streaming from my body.

Drawing Nearer To A Time When Everything Is Good

Inspired by the film Quills

I had this thought that our time line, based on goodness and badness, has a shape of a triangle. At the beginning of time everything was good, then slowly it climbs up into a slope as time progresses. It reaches a certain point--a time wherein there was a lot of bad things in the world--then it slopes down again, back to its original level of absolute goodness.


I have to explain what I mean by goodness, as well as badness here. A time of an abundance of badness is when there's a lot of things that can be considered bad at a certain time. And a time of goodness is when very few things in what people think, do or feel can be considered wrong.


There was a time when the first men, in order to fill the world with human beings, mate with their kin without hesitation, and even the Judean God said that, it was good (The multiplication I mean). Also, in the bible it wasn't only once that a tolerated incest occurred uncriticized. Almost exactly the opposite of this, there was a time when by mere words laced with suggestions of things properly restrained in private could cause such an outrage and even bonfires or rolling heads. And we can witness in our own time that this is no longer true or that the reactions to such actions are less passionate as in the past. I can cite a catalogue of other examples illustrating this point if I put my mind to it, but here are some which came without effort: we started as cavemen with very skimpy clothing, then somewhere in the time of manners, as if in a hysteria of shame covered almost every inch of our bodies, particularly that of the female species, but now, it's as if we only wear clothes to bare what's supposed to be hidden (particularly with the female species). In most cultures in the past, the women are the stronger gender in terms of religion and in some cases even in matters of state, but somewhere in time it became a bad idea, and the men dominated this arena, and everyone was comfortable and considered it as the only good way of doing these things. But now, not only is it good for women to do anything that men can do, but it's slowly becoming not bad for women to leave the care of their families, their traditionally good function, for their careers, which is now becoming firmly rooted not only as their right, but a renewed tradition.


This may sound like one lazy generalization, for not all of us may have necessarily experienced the same sloping up or down of this triangular time line simultaneously, depending upon kindred factors like beliefs, culture, religion, geography or economy, but it doesn't mean that this did not happen to other cultures significantly distinct from us. This happening earlier or later, doesn’t matter.


What matters is everything is slowly becoming good nowadays, regardless of what it means. It sounds like a twisted approach to a false paradise. Will incest be tolerated again, as of women empowerment? Or would killing a thief or a plunderer or an adulterer , without incurring bad karma, as stated in the Vedas, inspire people to do so? Will everything be good in the future, and the only thing that will be actually considered bad would be calling something as un-good?

Higgly Town Fears

She would block her tiny body against the TV screen whenever I raise the remote to that direction, as if that would prevent the channel from changing--my daughter loves Higgly Town Heroes, that much. So most of the time, I get to watch it with her. I even know the songs, and actually notice if the episode is a re-run. There's only one tiny thing I notice about the show that causes me to feel one tiny misgiving. There's this part in every Higgly Town episode where a problem will crop up, which is apparently "too big" a job for the Higgly Town kids, and so they need some help from the Higgly Town Hero featured for that show. Anyway, that's not where I saw something. It's that part where Twinkle would think of a very "lofty" idea to solve a problem, before giving up and eventually ask for help from the adults, because Fran, the squirrel character, and also their baby-sitter, would always bring it down with a condescending "Great idea there, Twinkle, but..."

I know kids should be taught logic and that the moon is not made of green cheese, but what's the big idea with "I hate to rain on your parade, Twinkle, but there are no such things as flying elephants and ant engineers..." This may sound cringy, but What became of make-believe? What became of dreams of being a swan or a princess in a sugar-coated kingdom? Should my daughter skip all of these and think like a realist, already? (Come to think of it, a talking squirrel, advising about reality, is a contradiction. Or was that the point I failed to see?) Recently, though, I had observed a noticeable cutting down with the "come on that's not possible" attitude. And the squirrel is actually "riding" with Twinkle, like inventing her own "fantastic" reasons like "the flying elephants are oiling their wings" instead of a cold, hard, "flying elephants don't exist." The Disney people probably just wanted to teach our kids about the balance of reality and fantasy, and that's okay, even if-- not counting books-- they are themselves, the store house of the biggest, and greatest fantasies in the universe. I only probably want my daughter to have a satisfyingly long suspension of disbelief, before she grows up and "naturally" think of these.

But then when she finally lets me have the control of the channels, and I arrive at these pictures of death and crumbling structures, of brutality and a world slowly coming to an end, I think about the border between fantasy and reality again, and this time my fear is no longer itty-bitty. Where can we put flying elephants and princesses on marshmallow carriages in the midst of this evil? And our children--how far out in Higgly Town or wherever dreamland their minds are, before being finally breached by the real?

Life, Death and Pinoy Big Brother

You find yourself in this artificial and temporary world. Everything seem nice and tolerable...a pool and comfortable beds, food. The chic furniture, the people, blow you away. Soon enough you forget that this is temporary, you get used to it, and adapt and accept. You make friends, you make enemies, and fall in love promising forever and ever, and actually feel a pseudo-happiness, and forget that this will end sooner or later.

And so you continue to sleep and be woken up by some joke expressed in music, and do what the big booming voice tells you. And if he’s pleased you get a reward, a promise of a vacation in a paradise or some heavenly place, now or when the time comes when you have to leave.

Some, who despite the “beautiful world” inside, still wanted to leave before their time, too homesick or just plain sick with the monotony, either do things that would piss the big voice off or simply decide and call it quits. They just simply stop “acting” the artificial life and just become plain annoying. Usually, when they leave they are never heard of again, banished, unforgiven by the host of self-righteous fans.

For to these zealots, you are a pet, a tamagochi that they need to take care of every night, nurturing your survival with SMS votes. You can’t just give up and get away with it.

And when you leave, your house mates cry as if they’ll never see you again, as if this is the only world. As if they’ll be forever stuck in that place. But you, who is about to leave, who can describe your expression? You who is finally allowing, after a period of calculated denial, the truth back in to your consciousness.

And when you are outside you will be met by your loved-ones, unconditioned by the world where you had come from, they seem to be wiser, for they’ve always known the truth.

And as you are debriefed before admitted back to the absolute, your whole life inside the “house” will flash in front of you in a big screen, as if to rub your foolishness in.

As Lola Laid Dying

Lola may die tonight, repeated the ambient voice over in my head, as I looked down at her shriveled form--almost no longer human, disconnected from any memory, almost impossible to create as a possible idea or an imagined image of her, none, nulled. The bulge and outline of her skull, as if itself alive, pressed against her face, wanting to tear away from its body. But she was still technically alive. Only in a comaesque sleep, and breathing with much effort. Her hollow mouth, all teeth gone with every son or daughter she bore, gapes and shuts like a tired socket. Her tongue receding to that dark place in her body. She even had that look behind the glass. The family she could no longer see--which she hadn't seen for a long time anyway--gathered around her, as if suddenly, in contest for her attention. But she was just there like part of the bed and the crumpled sheet, her face an embossed design on her pillow.

I have seen a lot of dead things. Fishes mostly and dogs. And I could not trace any difference from those things and with what I was seeing then. A thought passed me, that as the soul perfects itself, the body deteriorates. I can only imagine the darkness she was seeing behind her cataract-blinded eyes. As she was almost dead in the waking world, I can feel that she was, as if given a second childhood, bouncing, running or even gliding in that dream-state, in that delirium, in that buffer between the living and the dead.

My childhood was made up of pretty sick, superstitious, and terrifying stories of moments like this. It was mentioned that she had called for a name belonging to a dead person. Which only meant they were beckoning her already. Which only meant she was walking that path lined with flowers and a bright light at the end. Around her house/chapel filled with saints and misalettes, interwoven with laminated pictures of the dead and the living, in gray and in color, I had felt the room was crowded, yet my skin felt flushed with a certain chill. I'm a sucker for horror stories, but I felt the fear in this one was more of awe rather than just fear for pain or even death. The awesome mystery of death. Death, the misunderstood. Notions about dying came to me...everything I had read or seen. Reincarnation, the afterlife, heaven and hell, merging with the void, but none of these had calmed me down. I just felt so lonely and pitiful, that I was sure I would breakdown. Not that Im too crazy about Lola. But I guess my sorrow was for myself too. For one day I will also go through this solemn brutality; this tearing away of the non-degradable from the degradable. This part wherein you wouldn't know where to go: you are too set up for leaving life but your are too afraid to embrace death. And I guess that's what will transform us. Okay I guess I have wet myself enough.

I have many approximations of what we will "see" in death, one of these is the classic falling into a bottomless vortex. But I wish from here to the moon and back, that what I'd be seeing there would be all the best moments in my entire life and all the worst fixed into best moments, played out before me in eternal repeat mode. Amen.

A Day In A Life Of Us

Apr 29, '08 4:58 AM

For the nth time I am convincing myself not to quit. It started when I was brushing my teeth and suddenly, as if brought by the blurriness of my reflection, I have asked, what's the use? Maybe the usual-ity of the alarm clock has gotten in my nerves again, or I'm finally noticing my hatred for the number 8, and my insane craving for the numbers 12 and 5!

Now I am here, in front of my desk and my computer, whose monitor is tagged with the word "mayor's" (maybe Id like to have one on my forehead also), and the noises in the office has started to die out: ah, break time. But I'm here, for what's the use of having a break. Little nice ladies, several of them now, and counting, have "invited" me to a cup of coffee or a piece of sandwhich...and I said, I get shaky with coffee and a sandwhich at this point might ruin my wolf-like appetite later when I have my supper. I need to be hungry, for I may be too tired to eat, and instead be eaten by the couch. Eventually they just disappear and I'm left with myself, and the sound of these keyboards clicking like teeth of a restless sleeper...hah, poetry, poetry, anyway, what's the use of thinking whether I'd quit my job? For the nth time.

Who loves their day jobs anyway? Come on, man, a day job is synonymous with words like "corrosive" "abusive" "stressful" "fatal" and "easy." Why don't I try a "night" job then? Something more exciting like security work? Or relaxing like a dishwasher? Or rewarding like a drug pusher? Ok I'm feeling a lot better now. 5 minutes to my favorite afternoon number. Five minutes more and I'm back home, in my soft couch, and the only thing that could bother me would be to decide what channel I'd be switching into after my show ends. Wow, this is the life!

Achievement

ACHIEVEMENT
Apr 24, '08 5:08 AM

It would have been a heated argument if I weren't that tired and drolling for sleep, when me and my good friend B on the same barandilla near the same Karangahan Blvd., but a little late in the night, talked and came to the point of talking about silly things again. That night it was about achievement and envy--or achievement-envy, whatever. I guess this was a relapse brought by, I don't know, certain feelings of un-appreciation.

Related Digression: Last night was Tabaco City night at Magayon Festival in Legazpi, Krear Bathala performed their, I guess, best work yet, KAHADEAN. Somewhere in the 7 minute song, a certain disgruntled Provincial official in the audience, texted the organizers to cut us out. The organizers "mercifully" waited for us to finish our second song before they did, and resumed the song and dance variety show...yehey! So there.

Back to achievement. Issue: Profile pictures showing high-rise buildings, snow, scenic spots, desert, white sand, a foreign person, etc. in a place other than the Philippines, has developed to a form of showing-off achievement. Warning: this will sound bitter. Okay, I told B that there is this trend in most friend network sites of showing off achievement using the context of the "abroad." B told me, so what? So what?, I would have asked (with matching spitting look), my blood rising. Can't you smell the garbage (I didn't say this, as I was tired and aching for bed, and a heated argument may make me not want to go to bed). But I might have had, for I was able to confess that I hate them-- yet I envy them. And it was B's turn to swing at me with a spitting look--you envy them? Maybe just a bit, but that's not the point. The point is achievement. I may be bitter, but achievement is the point. So we moved along to discussing what achievement is. Blah, blah, blah, we had arrived at this conclusion or more like an amicable settlement: achievement is relative to what you are (all that cliche), so even if there are people who upon waking up wants to make money they have achieved something worthwhile regardless of how much as long as they have been the best money-grabber or businessman at that moment. This also goes from the lowly eskinita tong-it grand champion to the greatest artist of the land. At least we have agreed that cars, mansions and saudi gold bling-blings are not the gauge for success. And because I cannot tolerate my own yawning anymore, I told him this is useless because I am not even affected by the photos anymore, and suggested to him to go someplace else, like Le Club Silencio or something where insomniacs can bathe each other in philosophical spit.

Justice

April 24, 2008

For a few days now, that word has been constantly in my mouth. Justice. There has to be justice in the end. I was drinking with my old friend B. one night when I mouthed it. I had my first flat tire ever in the middle of nowhere; he was already drunk from waiting at a bar where he was supposed to have his first solo performance, because the supposed organizer had his first flat tire ever in the middle of nowhere.

It was a Saturday night in a lonely town where if you have nothing much to do, like having sex with your girlfriend or writing an obra maestra or something, it's better to drink. So we did. The philosophizings started early. I wasn't having a buzz yet when that word came out of my mouth: Justice. There has to be justice in the end. We were staring at some big sub-urban houses from a far, partly hidden by the inability of the lampposts to shed light on everything. Our drunken words were just abbreviations of what we had gone through. He even counted the years we had been friends. He told me 1994; I told him it was the summer we first learned wordstar. Blah, blah, blah. I can't remember where the word justice arrived, but I can see now that it was a highlight. A roman numeral in an outline. My words were roughly like: for all we have suffered there must be a reward or something, even not here. I don't know if I had mentioned Van Gogh as an analogy. I might have, as I usually do. What I am sure is it was about suffering. B. asked me if he could kiss me in the lips, and it rained, so we had to go inside, and I laughed so hard I thought I'd die. That was a good one I told him. Inter cut to other tangible scenes: B. vividly (by my request) told me his first experience with a girl. Blah, blah, blah we both had a hard on. I congratulated him, but because he was way over 20 the time he was devirginized I consoled him: mine was with a hoar, sob (no offense to our brothers and sisters in the pleasure industry).

A few days later, we got to talk again. Red dusk at the side of Karangahan Boulevard, we were sitting on a barandilla, and the word came out again. I learned from him that his present occupation was with what Beauty is. I told him mine was Justice. He was slowly puffing at his cigarette, I was waving his smoke away. Many years ago, when we were young I was the smoker and he was the waver. I'm afraid of dying of stroke or a heart attack so I quit my most beloved pastime. I'm afraid of many things. Many things I can't do because I'm afraid. Like smoking a joint might cause me a nervous breakdown. All these sufferings and the others I have already endured. Abstinence from the things I love, e.g. fatty food and getting lost. Justice. There has to be a reward in the end. Like when I have stood for hours in the sunken garden every Sunday till my vision turned white, in a charoled pair of boots and a stupid mass-produced cap, and my face a catch pan for our sergeant's spit I knew I was doing it for the love of my parents, for graduation and a piece of parchment. I just hope this is something like this. I hope each remarkable hurt whether it be a pinch or a genuine shattering of heart is being audited and someday be reimbursed or something. When my turn in the band practice came, I went in, and B. just puffed on. He was in no hurry to spend his time alone.