To really update this poor blog three years later, I just have to post that I have finally quit smoking. An incident about three months ago pushed me to just give it up. It wasn’t anticipated. I didn’t even plan for it. I just quit. I can’t say it was effortless; there were – and still are – moments when I feel this almost-uncontrollable urge to shift to my old, nasty habit once more. Can’t say it gets easier each day, coz I can’t exactly rate some days as harder than others. All I know is that it’s a constant, if subconscious, struggle. I might talk about it some other time.
One is probably the most defensive person on earth.
Or at least in one’s plane of existence. One’s biggest challenge is to act without worrying about anyone challenging one’s intellect. One has heard the line that goes ‘there will always be somebody better that yourself, whom you will meet along the way…’ a few times already, but accepting that idea is something one has yet to accomplish.
Of course, this does not speak for everything that one does (there one goes again, in defense). One just lived long enough in this world to realize that one can be anything one wants to be, if one sets one’s mind to it. Whatever or whoever one is not at the moment is entirely one’s doing.
Andrea Bocelli sang; she would have had chosen to explore the wonders of nicotine. Former President Corazon Aquino claimed the executive seat when she could have chosen to stay as the silent housewife of deposed Senator Ninoy.
Whatever decision is made, leads to the next chapter of the story.
Perhaps, for once, one could write something subject to the world’s scrutiny, and not mind too much. Or perhaps one could mind, but not entirely lose face should one fail to please everyone who scans one’s page.
It’s funny how one made a mark in college by displaying utter disregard for other people’s opinions, when in fact, one does mind. One probably just mastered the art of keeping some things to one’s self.
It’s even funnier how some people think one has substance, when all one really has is the ability to play with words.
The new run begins. the new run begins with what people would call the re-birth. but secretly, she believes it’s not really new. just a rehash of the past issues, the past crimes and past falls from glory. perhaps the exact words won’t come, probably not in time to make one sound eloquent. what is eloquence, but the judicious willingness of time and space that enables the ability to form the right picture, the right thought, at the right time. What is time but the concept of yesterday, the Now and the future? what is the future but what we perceive it to be, as intangible as ultimate joy or despair?
I, however, for one, care about that fact, no matter how i try to cast it out of the inequities of day-to-day living. Sojourn with the trivialities. it’s the best New Age drug. Ask the kids with ticking timebombs for blood pressures, trapped in the world of their virtual games. ask the professionals who become permanent fixtures of their boss’s wonderful modern torture chambers we all call our offices. Ask the 50-year old woman who blames everyone but herself for her impending doom of dying all alone while the world loses consciousness of her existence.
Triviality is a good excuse. But it’s poor therapy. And like someone i know once said, when you acquire sanity by stud, the father always looks like the son, and they have a very high suicide rate.
What we want is a niche where we could be the best in what we do. Where there is no such thing as failure, only retribution. What we want is an ovation for our acts, the admission that we have been born for something, For Something. We want this to be the truth, not the fact borne out of commitment or subjection to friendship, love or loyalty. We want the wonder stamped on every audience’s face when we have achieved the impossible and have crossed boundaries into Unreality. We want the sepulchral understanding for our uniqueness and tragedy. We want the impossible, improbable empathy from friends and strangers alike, as impartial and as exact as a mathematical equation. We want freedom from love, humanity and subjectivity. We want Brilliance. We want Superlative. We want Perfection.
Artful, languid and long
She flicks
And neither poverty, nor fear
Could touch her at that moment
Arid smoke curls almost to her brows that are
Perfect half moons
Tome of composure and inactivity
Perfect picture of reserved energy.
Unaware, that pose says
Unaware of whether stares are given in distaste or reverence
For that provocative, uncaring figure.
Eyes burning at the lapel of that uncomfortable young yuppie
Through and beyond his straight, aching back,
Through the wall behind him, beyond which an old man hurriedly stir fries his vegetable side-dish for the fiftieth customer
Through the dirty, grimy kitchen’s backdoor
Beyond the unmanned, unused night road
Into the darkness
dreaming her wealthy dreams.
Excyooouzz Meeh, Suuhh… – Musing during EDSA dos (Feb 24, 2006)
Posted: September 4, 2010 in From my old blogWhile I write this down, thousands of people are being mobilized along EDSA to begin yet another round of cries for Freedom and Democracy. As I stare at my monitor, people are screaming at PGMA out of rage due to poverty, the ever-present scum that eats at the Filipino people. It is a far cry from what took place more than twenty years ago as nuns and men in arms held hands and prayed for the country’s deliverance; yet, it is the same scene. A different crowd, crying out a similar fate. A different culprit being charged – whether justly or unjustly – for a similar crime of lambasting the life of a people and a nation.
I wonder at those people who could be feeling exactly as I feel at the moment. I wonder at the amount of dejection they must hide. I am tired of EDSA. No matter how many times we try to relive this moment of a Nation’s uprising, we will always find our un-united selves on different sides of the fence, at varying times depending on our beliefs, biases and own austere opinions. The biggest loss is for the people in the streets, many of whom are too uneducated, and who could have very well been used as spawns by those with bigger interests, and who find too much to lose to march their angst on the streets.
I feel saddened at the state of my country whose people could find it in themselves to trample each other, including the weak and the elderly, to win a chance at lottery game shows. I am deeply disturbed by a society that has lost its faith in the government, regardless of who owns the seat of power. I am worried that no matter how many times history is repeated, people may never learn, regardless of the indications that I thought pointed the other way. But more than anything, I am enraged at constantly warring sides of the elite few, and the personal vendetta of people in power to turn the state of the nation this way and that to achieve their means, at the cost of lives of millions of Filipinos who work hard for a living and pay their taxes, regardless of insurgencies and price hikes imposed by faceless sectors.
Sounding fascist yet?
Sometimes literature gets soggy without the angst.
I guess you could say that after i’ve gone past my high school years, i’ve lost the fire to scream my pain madly at the world, perhaps because i realized that it doesn’t listen. I have to wonder sometimes at those who continue to live a profane existence of mulling their fears out loud, and ask myself, “Will they ever grow up?”. The other, scarier question would be, “What have i become, in growing up?”.
Sure, there is pain still. I am fortunate (?) enough to feel it, and to recognize it for what it is. What is missing is the urge to fight it and strike it down. I’ve grown, over the years, to be comfortable with it, and calmly accept the fact that i belong to it, just as the rest of humanity is owned by it until it dies. Even in death, there is pain.
There is Synchronicity to Pain. There is rhyme and reason. There is rationality.
The hardest thing you could ever do in a relationship is to accept that person’s past. I should be the last person to complain about this because my previous lives are cluttered up and stuffed with numerous skeletons, and the least I could do for a person is to be thankful that whoever he is has learned to accept me, despite all the mistakes that have marked me for life. But hell! I can’t stand pasts!
Allow me to be selfish.
I can’t say the same for everyone – I wouldn’t know. It will definitely sound cheeky and stupid but for my own peace of mind, I’d like to think that I am the best thing that’s ever happened to a person’s life, specifically if that person has become a significant part of me. (Haha. Laugh all you want.) And the thing is, upon learning that there have been equally significant things – and people – that have come along in the not-so-distant past – BEFORE I HAPPENED, well. It just spoils my day.
My day has been spoilt today, ask no questions. No matter how I’m going to deal with this tomorrow (in the most mature manner I could muster), let me just express my deepest disgust at myself for feeling this way. I’d like to see it as immature, selfish and unfair, but waking those memories that weren’t mine to begin with makes me sorry that I ever did. I wish I hadn’t known. Damage done, no turning back, sure, yeah. And there’s really no one to blame but myself. I can’t really blame anyone for experiencing the best times of their lives without me, right? So why do I feel so insecure?
hy do people do things they end up feeling sorry for when it’s too late and things have happened? It sucks when you really, really make a mess out of things when in fact, you thought you were trying to make them ok. Then you’d wish you could still do something, but you discover that things are no longer in your control, and all you can do is look. It’s like Tipping Point. A certain moment comes when you just sit back and let all hell break loose.
All I know is that things have to be ok soon. Maybe not at this point, but I’m hoping for the light at the end of the tunnel. There’s gotta be no way but up, in this regard.
On account of this being my corner of the virtual world, I just need to make an announcement: I’ve done it all wrong again. I’ve promised myself that it never would happen, that once was enough. But I guess I’m just a very, very slow learner. I’ve fucked up again, one way or another.
Why do I always need to make up all these stories? I need to always envelop myself into a series of issues and worries that may or may not exist, but that in any case, becomes real enough to destroy relationships. It’s mental. There’s this mode I get into that grips me and drives me around and about like a twister, destroying anything on my path. And all the while, there’s this part of me that’s detached, aware of the mistakes I’m making, but unable to stop the rest of me. It watches while the rest of me turns everything over, in search of an answer, that I’m being fooled, that I could take a strange sort of satisfaction from knowing I was right from the beginning.
I’m sounding like those psycho characters from Stephen King’s novels. Perhaps the reason I like King is because those psycho characters in his stories are almost always the protagonists. I have a feeling he’d understand me better than anyone else. Too bad he’s married.
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One of the hardest things I need to accept is that there will always be someone who’s better than I am who would get a better slice of the pie, so to speak. The bitch of it is that I may not be a good as that other person, but I’m just not dumb enough to not get it when someone either gets frustrated at me or lets me off the hook easier than they would that better person. It feels shitty, like being part of a pack that gets the bones, always gets them, just not the best part, because you weren’t the best performer. Those times, It’d be a lot easier to just be completely stupid and clueless. But of course, for the sake of the viewing public and the die-hard fans (not that there are a lot of them, you understand), I just have to keep working at it.
Sometimes it feels like Life is a series of work-outs. The moment you stop is the day you die. Even a boyfriend would be another spectator in the audience who I should watch out for, lest he realizes he can have – acquire? – a better mutt.
I’m wondering what ever happened to all the good things I could expect from myself those years back. This same hand wrote those words of hope in sniffy, lovey letters I wrote my ex-boyfriend/ex-best friend/soul brother. I wonder where it all went. I guess it died the day I stopped loving him, stopped believing the impossibility of being disappointed and getting your heart broken. It seems like that time was a lifetime ago. Now I realize I’m the same person who can get hurt, only there’s less of me to hope. Fuck. Whatever happened to me? What the hell went wrong somewhere between St. Joseph Town Homes and Quezon City Subdivision (translation: the past ten years of my life)?
There’s one thing that remains the same though; my strange sense of humor.
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People who I think understood me more than most:
1) Monj
2) Edward
3) Eric B. (in a weird way)
4) Eric C.
5) Ana
6) Nico
7) Carl
Not a long list, considering my job where I meet a lot of people. The industry I’m currently in just buffets its practitioners into evenings with CEO’s and country managers and “big” people who, thankfully, act like they know you and that you belong in their world, by virtue of your Publicity for their event. Oh. Under it all, I guess, is the assurance that regardless of how much your wardrobe costs and its consequence (in the event you get included in their photo releases), you are, in fact, helping them keep making a lot of money, by some obscure quantitative derivative for brand recognition. Hell.
Anyway, back to my list. These are the people that do not know me much, but they know me more than most others because they realized some things about me that I didn’t even know then. These people are the ones that have helped ease the long, frightful journey of “knowing thyself”. I have a lot of acquaintances. Perhaps a number of enemies. But these people can tell most of my best and worst, and have lived to survive it. Haha.
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Oh God, too much coffee is giving me palpitations. I need a beer to even out my heartbeats.
