June 1999

June arrives again with clouds of gloom. There is a typhoon declaring openly: the earth is bleak. I picture people in their romantic idiocies: gawking at their windowpanes overlooking Manila’s heavy traffic during the stormy late afternoon, their mouths open and their chin resting in their palms. People pricking themselves with self-pity for their lovelessness and are bleeding profusely. I could be one of them and fuck that.

June’s clouds are gloomy and the earth is bleak. But I shouldn't be unhappy.

I have another class with G____ and he never ceases to amaze me. He asked us to write a paper for the course and I was thinking something about the problem of language or the needlessness of morality. I wasn’t sure whether he penetrated or read through my mind but he raised the latter in the discussion. We cannot be held morally accountable for what we do since we came from nothing. I asked him if life would be better without morality. He said yes.

Without morality, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we would go ahead and bite each other’s head off and blast ourselves back to a primitive age. Truly, other species in this universe had survived without morality. And whatever morality is, wo/man has made it a dogma and institutionalized it. And I don’t think he would disagree that morality only limits our freedom because like laws and systems, it limits us to given propensities, or to a certain nature. What N. has to say about this is that morality is ridiculous and we should be judged as individuals --- i.e., not in universal moral standards. This is partly what he thought and partly my understanding.

Without morality, we would still grow, our intelligence would probably improve and catapult us to a higher state of being. If this wouldn’t happen instinctively, then it would happen spontaneously, just as in G____’s analogy: young birds simply flap their wings and eventually learn to fly.


In another one of his smart metaphors, he tells us the life and the classroom. Life is when you sit down in class for one whole hour, and at the end of that hour he raises his hand, and says conclusively, “This is absurd.”


I’ve been drinking like a flower vase and never has alcohol been so relieving --- after a day at school, or night at work. Perhaps alcohol is just a mere inanity to stuff my emptiness and boredom, since my impetus to read or study had suddenly gone on vacation. For one thing, Blue Ice is cheap at this Malate beer garden where we hang out, and their grilled tuna belly is fantastic. I can’t shy away from anybody who invites me for a drink.

I’ve always thought that the booze had brought the best out of me, made me think and do things. It helped, however artificially, banish my fear and heighten my consciousness. It was also an experience I’ve often shared with my friends. Now it’s just something I crave for. Now it’s just a habit can’t avoid.


Where there is no fear, there is boredom. All life is an offshoot to boredom. If we stop breathing, we just might stop getting bored to tears as well.


I finally found the copy of Sartre’s Nausea in the library. I finally found something that would make me feel normal. In each of the first sixty pages I’ve read so far, there is a flood of ideas (though not necessarily philosophical) to contemplate, an image to be imagined with increasing delight. I didn’t hear or read about the novel’s ideas and the images for the first time, but what so strikes me this time is that it makes me feel how solitude, sadness et cetera can easily be neglected because the grass isn't greener on the other side. Togetherness and happiness can be equally boring. There is only everydayness and then there is nothingness.


I take a pause from reading nausea and last line goes: “A man is always a teller of his tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the sotries of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live life as if he were recounting it… But you have to choose: to live or to recount.” I’m almost obsessed by stories and by thoughts, even my fantasies, especially creative ones, that I have almost forgotten how to live. But what is it to live? I quote a line from the same page: “When you are living, nothing happens.”


I discovered another danger of keeping a journal, or perhaps re-discovered it as I ran through Nausea. You take account of the events, incidents and adventures of a lifetime only to find that all of them happen repeatedly, and repeated again, like the rhythm of your walk, that they could only be insignificant. On the other hand, when you try to re-live an exact moment, you can only try to ruin the moment’s authenticity --- for they can never be extended.

Where does eternal recurrence come in?


I have so far enjoyed Sartre’s Nausea not so much for the philosophical insight, but for the character of the protagonist. The protagonist has a fascinating fondness for picking up paper and chestnuts. His characater transcends philosophical insights and tells it through the details of his experience. His very gestures, his words, and whatever pink bricks or bubbles of light that he notes, his entire experience collectively, conveys existentialism.


Walking while the early evening’s winds whisper the sadness of its final faint song, the violins weeping their last teardrop quietly in the drizzle that passed by, the loneliness you brought left me and I found Solitude. Under a tall lamp post, where the orange bulb the late embers of sunset and the thin, coming crescent moonlight looms over dull shadows lying flat on the wet streets where you and me once walked --- our tongues teasing, our hands laced --- I now found Boredom. But unlike you, boredom and solitude has never left me. (This could be a horrible, ad misericordiam poem.)


Will there ever come a time, perhaps when even the life of my bone marrow have been seized and sucked dry, that I will tell myself, Nothing fascinates me anymore.


Friday, 8:00 p.m. The night is dry, and I am supposed to finish a difficult Analytic Philosophy read about belief, inquiry and meaning. That is until I listen to a program called Groove Garden and serve myself good, flavorful bottles of cold Pale Pilsen and baked mussels. It blends well with acid jazz. All the lights in the house are turned off, except for the light at my desk whose beams are almost blue. My only company was a few more pages of Jean Paul Sartre’s Nausea. I can almost taste the novel together with the beer. God it’s good. The texture of the book’s paper is a crisp yellow. It's Friday night and this feels like a party.

“I must let my pen run on, without searching for words.”

A phone call to someone else ruins a rather perfect Friday night.

But the past, however recent it is, collapses when the present arrives. I’m not happy about this drink anymore, and this HBO movie is lousy.

While having a cigarette, I heard Somewhere Over the Rainbow in its classical version at 98.7. I remember the 15th floor window with Taft’s thousands bulbs exploding in small glitters, the rising carbon monoxide, conversation, and dim lighting --- clouded my head.


Late at night, mom and dad brings me Kowloon Siopao. And I thank them with all my heart for satisfying my craving. I had a serving of chicken pao, pork pao and a jumbo pao. I want to vomit.

I have the house by myself again, and it’s the Saturday afternoon to start the hard industry of reading Analytic Philosophy. After a few pages I decided to have lunch: rice, tereyaki, chicken nuggets in barbecue sauce, and softdrinks on top of all that.

On 98.7 with Schopan, Bach, and Mozart in the background, I sit on the sofa facing the curtains. They filter the sun’s light in an opaque and heavy pink or old rose. Everything in the living room is calm and motionless, except for the unseen movement of sound waves and my hand reaching a glass of water to my mouth. I feel too mild for coffee, which I could have later with H. over a long overdue good conversation. Maybe I should clean the room, do some push ups and sit ups before going out.