August 2000

I decided. I had to go through a series of decisions, the results of which would be regrettable, or just slanting towards being regrettable. Life has been less kind and less convenient than usual. And I’ve been no less than lazy and too lame to affirm my life, grease my world and run the show.
I decided to delay my graduation for another three months, with only six units left after this term. I didn’t pursue my thesis for the second time, and I am once more defeated by default. I had to rationalize this to my parents. It is terribly annoying and energy draining, preventing you to do a whole lot of things or set your priorities straight, because you know that your parents disapprove of the way you run your life. I keep on telling myself that college is a marketplace of ideas and I haven’t been buying a lot of ideas on sale. All the same, I am not able to buy those ideas no matter how long I stay. Perhaps it’s time I move on to other markets, chew ideas of a different flavor. Perhaps I just didn't want to give up my college lifestyle at 19.
I decided to resign from the staff job at ___. I’ll certainly miss the shows --- my Philharmonic Orchestra Friday nights, my Sunday afternoon ballet from PBT or BP, TP plays, gala evening Operas, chorale festivals, film showings, art exhibits, that sparkling crystal and capiz chandelier, the marble, the hallways, the close encounter with real artists, the lumpen fucking culturati and the cultural fucking elite. Miss Saigon season is up this October. This musical is probably something a broadway classic, but it just saddens me to think that many Filipinos think that culture is embodied by something like Miss Saigon, and not by something like “A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.” Behn Cervantes was saying that Miss Saigon should not be treated as some national event because it is only, after all, the “cultural surplus” of another country. It is a good show, yes, but it goes into the way of the slowly growing, yet highly esteemed theater groups such as Tanghalang Pilipino. It is regretful to think that under the banner of promoting culture, people would rather watch something from Cameron and Mackintosh. There are probably more morons than geniuses in the art world.
I decided not to attend my test and interview last Friday for Andersen Consultancy. I thought it isn't the job for me.
I decided not to stay sober from my drinking marathons.
And finally, certainly the most woeful, most regrettable decision of all: to decide that life has been regrettable lately.



Friday night. I take a break from doing nothing. Today I wish I had some company but there's no one to date. So it's alone as usual and fun as usual. I head out clad in a thin green shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. On the last full show the theater was a big freezer where even Dunkin Donuts coffee wasn’t any help. This Friday night’s movie is “Down to you." It was some chummy, feel-good movie, with its level of chumminess within the bearable. At the very least it's unlike the usual teeny-bopper flicks that make you puke your guts out. It was about relationships and commitments in the college and early post-college stage. What makes it interesting is the character who studies goes to art school in New York is a killer dancer. Somehow I feel like I myself could do a movie like that, a film which mainly consists of clever dialogue, a winner soundtrack, a lot of kissing and sex.
There’s a unique pleasure I feel every time I step out of the theater, and walk the empty, tired mall late at night. I let the dry winds outside blow warmth on my cold limbs as I think about what I just watched.
Tonight I go home to fulfill my few academic obligations, and I was feeling a recovered from last night's tedious hangover. But I find the usual house scenario: friends are here are you're robbed of your time alone. No solace in this place but sometimes you're happy that there isn't.