June 2002

This just happens once in a while, and then it starts to occur more often as do sores or strokes. Until then, you suddenly begin to understand why people innately have the ability to develop antibodies for diseases, or just how easy it is to get used to pains and pangs.

Gone to CCP again to see Maningning Miclat’s four paneled painting. It’s like boxed-in depression made huge, largely unexplainable, irresolvable, and captures you completely. In one of my nights off, I watched the Anton Juan play for the French Spring in Manila. It’s very good, but not too fascinating on my own uncritical and unintelligent judgment. Going back to CCP isn’t the same. For the reason perhaps, that you’re not really part of it anymore. It’s not one of the regularities found on your zone. You become just a visitor who’s moved on and is trying to remember. The ushers from my batch who are still in CCP ask me why I’m alone all the time. I never really celebrate being alone because it’s no longer a reflection of your solitude, but merely a convenience. Besides, the only activities that I can do alone is to go out alone go to the mall, watch movies, have dinner, write, and masturbate. The movies have really been disappointing, and it was not because I see them alone. Although they are worth watching, nothing so far (this year) has been worth of praise. Even the reads become disappointing sometimes. There are good chapters and some not pretty good ones. So far, I can’t remember (for this year) a read that I would really rant and rave about. Even that. After getting a few rounds with her, I eventually got bored with it and wanted someone new. Sometimes even music stops to come from people’s souls, it merely becomes just plain listenable. This feeling doesn’t arrest all the moments. The feeling when things stop being funny. When it comes to admitting that although things are all right, things aren’t the glad way they were. When you start to use “things” instead of a more specific, more witty, or even more artful adjective. You even keep it plain and stop using words that clutter. This just happens once in a while, and then it starts to occur more often as do sores or strokes. Until then, you suddenly begin to understand why people innately have the ability to develop antibodies for diseases, or just how easy it is to get used to pains and pangs. Without having to go through a dissertation in Semantics, I think I can tell that it helps to naming and enumerating things. I think it would help to make list of Top Fives or all-time favorite whatevers. I resolve to make list of the lists I would make and their specific categories, starting off with no specific ranking yet. It’s already Wednesday afternoon and my week is just about to begin. Five and a half hours away from logging in to a difficult Wednesday, with absolutely nothing to look fucking forward to in my normally uneventful week in an almost pointless life symptomed by the I-feel-I’m-too-old-at-early-twenty-something crisis. Except perhaps, for pay day, which would provide means for a little activity in my excitement scale. I still need the money to lavish during my days off. I guess the two days off went well enough. Last Monday morning I was out at 5:30 and had to stay in Makati for a medical appointment at 8:00. I spent the time in between playing billiards alone in the office recreation room. I couldn’t have coffee or breakfast because I’m not supposed to eat or drink anything before the medical exam. I’m obligated to bring some samples for blood chemistry. In the recent annual check up I was diagnosed with hypertension. My blood pressure was 150/110 and 140/110 if I get enough sleep. My my right eye only reads 20/50. Of course, I’m overweight. I gobble and shovel food into my mouth, along with beer and cigarettes and have not seriously exercised. This made me begin to wonder how sick I was mentally. I wondered if there is some deeply-rooted disturbance in my unconscious that I’ve grown too thick-skulled and too indifferent and apathetic about. I’m not really too paranoid about the outcome of the medical tests. I’ll take the prescribed medicine or attend to the occasional check-ups. This will only slightly affect, or will not impose any radical changes in my current lifestyle. I just minimized my smoking. As a matter of fact, I have managed to cushion the usual jolt of paranoia brought about by work, probably by virtue of being sedated. Anyway, I rested well Monday afternoon and woke up at around four for Dead Poet’s Society. I first saw this second year high school while hanging out at the Guidance office. This movie would peg a spot on my all time top ten. This time around though, I didn’t watch it with the same intensity, eagerness for poetry, exploding hormones, and idealism as before. I grew even more nostalgic of days when I had so much unquenched curiosity about life and the world. I remember how Cirilio Bautista taught us that Frost’s poem about “two roads diverged in the woods…” is not really about being different, or taking the less traveled route, but about the inconsistency of human decision. After watching it again, I wanted to read some of Walt Whitman’s poetry. I forgot to have dinner that night and went straight to this great date spot in Examiner called Aresi. They violinist played both saccharine-filled pop music. The walls had makeshift falls and you can hear the water swish. I didn’t have a date though, and I didn’t have anywhere else to go to. For the lack of considerable prospects, I wouldn’t really die to have a date. I met up with some friends for a few drinks. We headed to a cheap videoke place in Roosevelt, after which we want to a “Health Club.” We went to Kowloon and I had two pieces of jumbo pao and slept over at my cousin’s. Most of Tuesday morning and afternoon was spent sleeping and playing the Star Wars game and trying to catch some of the shows on I missed Monday night TV appointment on Star World. Late in the afternoon I went to Makati to meet up with R. and D.N. to join them in an after-work drink. We went to this economical but encouraging place in Chino Roces called “Obeertime.” The crowd was mostly older-crowd employees probably set out on getting drunk to shake off the stress. It’s great to see my friends again, and to reminisce about high school and even college over a case of beer and grilled panga ng tuna and tenga with tokwa immersed in seasoned soy sauce/vinegar. Of course, we had to discuss all that rant about careers and your future. I think I worked a good number of months ahead of DN and a few months on R., but how I envy their zealous pride and attitude towards the future, and the determination they have on their planned career path, and their planned life. I haven’t gone any far but I feel that I’m just mere sedated. My brother arrived from Davao today and I also envy how he travels a lot and sets out on adventures on such places. I woke up at 4 am and they were still drinking, so I joined for a little catching up on stories. I slept like a baby on Tuesday night and just spent the afternoon reading this new short story collection. It’s almost a newly formed habit to listen to reflective music before the end of the days-off. I played the Mozart-Beethoven-Bach list followed by some chillout. The Classical Comforts album seemed so fucking saddening this afternoon. I wanted to lament, but I really had nothing to lament about. But I guess started to think that I needed to achieve something. After having read this month’s and last month’s entries, I just wanted to learn to achieve a state of absolute sedation. This would probably postpone how one should live life, but it would do good until something comes along. I don’t know how to put it exactly, but it’s better than lamenting or brainwashing yourself to be happy. I am ever thankful, however, for my family, and the time we all spend together. My mom’s birthday while swimming in Laguna with all of our relatives. I had to take really long walks to find the nearest open cake shop at 7 am to bring her cake. Father’s day Lunch. It’s been a while since all of us sat together and ate at the dining table. We paid for lunch and simply appreciated the moment and each other. The gimmicks with my brothers, with our quiet, unsolicited understanding that makes harmony and happiness so effortlessly easy. With all my solitude, they keep me together. When sleepless in the space between the beginning and the end of work. This is the only time of the day that I should be having a life, or at least getting some sleep. I’ve been looking forward to resume my reading for Einstein’s Dreams, which I have actually been aching to do when I was at work last night or since H. lent it to me, craving to stuff my imagination with its imagery, of imagining what it is to be stuck in time or to be lost in time. It lets me imagine time collapsing or being something as complicated and indescribable as the smell of cinnamon. Imagine how missing socks reappear, be locked in embrace and contentment for an eternity, or to see a raindrop suspended in midair. Fantastic dreams. I think I lacked the concentration to sustain the appropriate level of appreciation for the book, so I decided to set it down for the meantime. I clicked the TV on to watch “Amy and Isabelle,” or I think it was Anne instead of Amy. I was too sedated to be touched, but the story was good enough to have me finish it to the end. It just lets me put a face to how my some of the customers would be like. Right after that I tried seeing “Bringing Out the Dead.” I see it as a commanding exaggeration for how a job genuinely burns you out. The film of course, was presented spectacularly. I had to have a beer for that. But I was too tired to finish the movie and took on recourse to rent it one of these days. I thought I was going to get my head down finally, but sleep escapes me. This is when I had to decide that another day has so insignificantly passed by. But I had to decide again, that my life generally has not had a sprinkle of significance recently. This day is really not a great deal different from others. Maybe this is not so bad. I’m getting more of what it means to be sedated, to have no wishes or whims, and to coincidingly have no whinings. I should remain hopeful, however, that in some nerve ending in my brain, there is a thought, some kind of shove for brain activity that would make me think of something to make this all ---- significant. At the beginning of the end of this week’s work, I kicked it off with standard biking session at CCP. There are so many vehicles on Roxas Boulevard during weekday mornings that I just thankful I am alive right now. Right after that I did some sit-ups and three sets of twenty-five repetition push-ups that my arms and chest still aches at this time. After biking of course, I jumped at the chance to watch the shows I missed on Monday night TV appointment on Star World TV. I saw everything beginning from Third Rock from the Sun, to King of Queens, to Dharma and Greg, Everybody Loves Raymond, Frasier and Boston Public, and even Caroline in the City. Except for occasional glimpses of MTV, Juice and Pia Guaño on MTB, this should be all the TV I prescribe myself, as these shows provide genuine laughs and sporadically, some touching sentiment. Sleepless and fatigued from the only heavy exercise I had in a few months, I spent my first night off drinking with relatives at Project Seven and then automatically slept a snap after my back touched the bed. The next morning I woke up and resumed reading Einstein’s Dreams after breakfast that morning. I took my the increasing number of antibiotics --- Amoxil, Diovan, and I had to take Alaxan because of the slowly becoming unbearable pain in my arms and shoulders. I had an allergic reaction and both my eyes got all swollen as if a bug bit them. There was an itinerary prepared for the day and although I almost did, I didn’t want to cancel everything because of this. I needed to go to UM to buy CDs and have lunch with no less than myself, watch Amelie have coffee and then go to NSG tonight to watch the World Cup over those hundred ounce beers. I wasn’t able to go to UM for the CDs but I did see the French film Amelie. At last, a film that I would hail. This is my best film of this year and would probably sneak into the top five of my International film category, and make a notch in my all time top ten. The film literally seems to have its own color and texture --- with the sepia quality and poetry of photographs. It also was able to blend some sort of harmony between magic realism, interesting magazine advertisements and MTV. I like the way it cleverly focused on little details to tell a story or illustrate a point. It was a simple story that unpretentiously laid itself out. It didn’t have the drugs and desolation of Trainspotting, or the rich sense of climax and plot in the events of Red Violin. Amelie presented a more simple story that beautifully, creatively and carefully comprised a distinct set of details. It used color with a subtle playfulness. It used tricks and visuals that came out as innovative and refreshing. A lot of other films will try to do this, but will fail. The kind of film I was looking for since it had some sort of literature I love to have infused myself with and celebrated each moment of. I saw it in Robinsons, after I had lunch alone and some Dairy Queen chocolate mallows. I believe less than twenty people were inside the theater, and I don’t think all of them were intent on seeing it. I had an entire row to myself, right on my preferred spot, three rows from the back, middlemost seat.