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.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 15, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
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!
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!
Friday, November 21, 2008
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.
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.
Monday, October 27, 2008
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.
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.
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