January 2001

One of the reasons why I suffer a journal lag is because I let my thoughts rest and grow. This points reference to more sensitive, more candid, devastating and derogatory thoughts about to be transformed into journal entries. I think twice about immortalizing them. I think twice if they were really thoughts I was thinking.

Winged Words. Two days ago, I met up with J____ and we ventured to Powerbooks and A Different Bookstore to order the Portable Nietzsche Volume. The order would cost me a grand or so, (it’s only 450++ originally) including delivery charges, shipping, taxes, my memorial plan and whatnot. The tag price would do a lot of damage to my limited pocket. Moreover, delivery could take a period of three months. I need the book badly as primary text for my thesis.
The interesting thing is that I actually owned one before. It was a well-cut multiple-karat diamond in my shelf. I gave Nietzsche to ____. I gave it to her as gift, two mornings after I told her I didn't mean any of the things I told her. In my drunken euphoria, and in the most flowery and winged words I could rake out of my woozy headed, boozed philosopher state-of-mind, I told her. There was even a point, a non sequitur of sorts, when she accused me of being “out running a scheme to ruin people like her.” That being, Z3-driving, horse-back-riding-at-the-club, Woodrose-alumni, been-to-New-York-London-Barcelona-Paris-and-I-know-those-places-like-the-back-of-my-hand, my-family-has-a-house-in-Highlands, I’ll-spend-the-weekend-in-Thailand, I-have-Oracle-stocks, my-friends-are-Ivy-Leaguers, I’m-acquainted-with-elite-and-political-honchos-in-these-sorry-islands. She also happens to be a I’ve-read-most-of-Shakespeare-I’ve-read-Umerto-Eco,-Nick-Hornby,-Herman-Hesse,-during-high-school, Ursulla-Heggi-Edith-Tiempo-reading, bibliophile, type of girl. Of course, I was not out running a scheme to ruin her, and I wouldn’t even call her a beefy rich brat. She was too intelligent, too splendid a soul to be brat. Her intelligence, her winged words, her grace, her free spirit --- conquers all.
“I was kind of wishing that you would like me.” "You’re afraid of me."
People like me don't give out expensive jewelry or fancy perfumes as gifts, I give Portable Nietzsche Volumes.
I wonder now, _____, where have all the winged words gone? Have they flown away forgotten to an infinite, yet empty space?
I have committed you to beautiful memory. We swam in an entire Pacific of marvelous words, ideas and stories, without even drowning.

Perhaps there is no better time to examine my life when I feel like being really honest with myself. This is actually one of the most fascinating things I learned about reading Nick Hornby, (the second novel from him is “About a Boy,”) Honesty is often laughable. We could laugh at the most honest occasions we find ourselves in. When it can’t be funny, it that scene in a dark comedy movie - when it's supposed to be funny, but you can't getting shit scared.

Some thoughts are not worth committing to memory. Some thoughts are worth going down the drain. The downside, however, is that some other thoughts are lost, some worthy thoughts wander off to oblivion. Sometimes, I regret not having the memory of these thoughts. These thoughts are no longer in my life when I no longer have them in my memory.

Most of the time I go on a solo-drinking binge. It’s two in the fucking morning, and I’m on my fourth bottle. I am supposed to be writing my thesis. And to put an evaluation on my thesis: my attitude towards it right now is that I haven’t been working too hard. I have only been writing it to put it on a level standard (which others would consider to be right enough,) but the bloke that I am ---- I haven’t given my all and the wholeness of every effort I could squeeze out of myself. Instead of writing my thesis, I drank and drank had pulutan. I finished a bag of chips, an estimated 1 pound of ground beef --- sautéed, with butter on a sizzling plate, added up with potatoes, an egg, red pepper, carrots, left-over liver spread and probably a gallon of artificial seasoning with all its monosodium glutamate clogging the veins in my brain. Drinking alone is an activity I have grown accustomed. And I’ve always been sure that it is always a happy occasion, much better than other drinking occasions that I spend with more that one person in the crowd.