May 2001

Top Three Dream Jobs at Age 20:
1. Coffee Shop Proprietor.
- Get to have free coffee, of any variety, at any time of the day.
- Get to have coffee in a place stacked with your own books on the shelves.
- Get to have your own coffee shop with art hung on the walls, lamps flooding it with light, carefully chosen furniture, strong spirited scent of brewed coffee perfuming the air, bread, cakes and sweets on the display table.
- Get to do fabulous manual labor, i.e., serving coffee, or whatever’s available on the menu.
- Get to read in your coffee place in its idle hours, or eavesdrop from the chatter of customers.
- Get to listen to listen to music that pleases you ears, while you’re having coffee, reading, and making a living.
2. Film/Book/Music/Theater Critic
- Get to watch films, read books, and listen to music, watch plays, (which comprises 66% of what I want out of life) and do it for a living.
- Get complimentary passes, books and music.
- Get to accomplish all your work at home in a chair and a laptop.
3. Any White/Blue Collar Job in New York (or Singapore, or Barcelona)
- Get to get out of this pisshole of a country (and grow nostalgic of it later on), explore and live on Earth’s new Rome, the present center of the universe.
- Get to take long walks on Central Park, within the proximity of what promises to be the most fascinating of people and of things, and live in a city that’s most alive.

The clearest indication that your youth is slipping away from your hands (no matter how tenacious your grip is,) is having to posses a fucking occupation in life.

Disappearing youth, disappearing youth.

It’s like a line snatched from some grunge song. Still at this young age, I could not be afforded the same angst I have previously acquired. I could no longer whine, complain, and hatch a plan to rescue the world from the strangling evils of capitalism and imperialism. Listening to Rage against the Machine, or Incubus, doesn’t help. I couldn’t capture the world, or carve words and ideas and images into beautiful poetry.
I was running from Roxas to CCP last Sunday. There was ballet at the front lawn. There was a digital film and music performance at the re-opened Film Center. That was where I was served a tremendous sunset. The event was aptly called, Digital Sunets. The building’s flight of stairs looked level with the sea, at the top of which were high pebble pillars that glowed with the last beams of the day. It casted beautiful shadows and made all things golden. The winds were moist with the smell of the sea, and the water seemed so thick, it seemed to overflow.
Since there was an event, there were concessions that sold beer. I exclaim: life becomes rewarding, sometimes. I was acquainted with the vocalist of one of the indie bands who performed. We wrote in the school paper together (and he wrote much better). I also envied his current status in life: UP Creative writing student, music critic, song writer, musician. On the other hand, I am, waiting for my graduating ceremonies in June to become an official bum. I also face the terrible, odds of becoming an underachiever. But I could no longer whine. My cup is empty of excuses to give my parents a reason why I’m not working yet, after they have paid for my overpriced La Sallian, world class education. It’s not only a disappointment, but a larger humiliation that offers no indulgence.
What sad event is your life if you remain a spectator of a life that has lost the spectacle. Everybody’s watching you and their eyes speak what you are, that you are a useless fucking commodity.
This is what is it is: self-pitying in the torturous post-college limbo. I have no pride left it me.