The Eternal Recurrence of Jairus

For now, we've decided to keep this handwritten instead of storing it digitally in an anonymous blog that nobody reads. Nevertheless, it's a small-scale triumph that's helped me feel more alive, to do the right thing, live best, learn, and laugh at myself. What an awfully long and ugly epitaph. 

It will all happen again. See you around.

 

The Famous Farting Area

Father's 76th. Attending a party in my 40s, I still have the tendency to be timid around people. After eating with my family, I sat at the edge of the hall by the stairs.

"What's Dad doing at the way way back?" My son asked his mother. 

"He's at the farting area." My wife says. I can see them looking at me, giggling.

It's a farty. 

Black Swan, Blue Moon and My Name is Red

 
Perhaps I've somehow understood the Black Swan. Everything goes your way, until one thing doesn't, a random stroke, and suddenly everything doesn't go your way. I am still learning how to deal with it. Expect the possibility of large deviations.

But not today, and not tonight. Because we've wrestled with the small failures and won. Because we have not forgotten that "just being alive is an extraordinary piece of good luck, a remote event, a chance occurrence of monstrous proportions."

I've re-read my notes on Black Swan and continued re-reading My Name is Red. Ongoing eternal recurrence. Husrev and Shirin loving each other and dying all over again. Tonight, I read the three parables of signature and style for the second time. I'm amazed all over again. Similar to listening to different versions or instruments playing Chopin's Nocturne No. 20 in C-Sharp Minor.  
 

Blue Moon has the pleasant, zesty aftertaste of orange peel and the character of a wheaty, Belgian white. I never would have bought this, if not for the fact that we got it buy-one-take-one today at the grocery store. So here it is, a little event of the so-called "randomness that produces the texture of life, the positive accidents."

That random ray of sunlight that fell on my children and made burst with joy while we were having a late lunch at the grocery store. The fluorescence the highlighted my wife's face that made me admire her beauty all the more.

In Praise of the Calamari Man

Thrice a day, I take a 300 meter walk (600 with the return) from home to I.'s school. The first to take him there, another to bring lunch, and finally to take him home. I try hard to fantasize that the walk was pleasant: tree-lined paths, prairies, rice field and mountain views but the reality is a whole world different. The sidewalks have become extensions of houses and businesses and vendors, so pedestrians (including students, as there are 3 schools, 2 of which are universities, in this 300-meter stretch) walk the streets alongside vehicles and poop. This part of Malate has become the hub of overseas employment agencies and the labor department's office is right on the corner. Hundreds of people occupy the streets and edges of buildings lining up with their hopes of getting out of this hell of a country so that they can send they money they earn overseas, back to his hell of a country. We call them our modern heroes. And here they are, sporting their Jordan sneakers, passports, certificates and documents in hand, grilling in the maddening heat of April and May, as though they are rightfully being prepared for an execution. Along with the pollution of 12-wheel/18 wheel cargo trucks that we play patintero with, we smell the street food - of frying oil and dipping sauces. The same people man their carts and little kiosks everyday. As I walk back and forth, I see them labor, fighting on and fighting fair. The smell of calamares  is most pungent, because we smell the sea wrapped in flour and bubbling in grease. The man who cooks it has an unforgettable face, the toughened face of the calamari man. A family sells buko juice. The daughter, helping them sell, is in a public school high school's uniform. 

Oh, prairies and tree-lined paths.

 

 

Tail End of 41. What We Learned.

 

I am still drawn by poetry and sentimentality. In the caves of my head, I've built cities and castles in a much kinder world. Prone to anger, and prone not to expressing anger. Bottle it up. Drink the bottle.

What I learned, at almost Forty-two, is that I should never tell anyone anything. 

May I be granted the strength to take my pain inward, bear it quietly, with good old Uncle Walt's perfect nonchalance. 

 

When We No Longer Punish Ourselves with Productivity

 

I didn't wake up early enough for the Sunday morning bike or run. So I start a new book and had coffee at home. Listened to jazz on an overcast Sunday morning. A roll call: Coltrane, Baker, Fitzgerald, Holiday, Davis, Evans, Ellington, Jones, Vaughan. Winehouse. No matter how dingy the room is, I'm in the fanciest cafe in the world. 

D. just finished a 11-hour shift. We lounge around the living room and catch up on That 90s Show.

Now, I've got to wash the car. And then pick-up my new progressive glasses. Skin tone, lightweight 6 gram frame coated with Crizal Sapphire built-in with ultraviolet filters. In a matter of minutes, I've adapted to using bifocals. Grab two bags of croissant because Kuya is crazy about them.

I drove back and we watched ballet in the afternoon. Fast food dinner. Swung by the bookstore for supplies, then printer ink. We had to do some homework when we went back home. I must've had a drink.

V. writes a diary too.