We must have strange sufferings, rarely sprinkled (maybe when the rain clears,) with strange joys.
FRI29JUN – TUE2JUL, 6:30 am. Running at CCP. Running to run away from it all. How relieving to see how the stress dissolves into puddles of sweat. The lack of exercise has turned my bones brittle; the way the lack of love turns a heart brittle as an old man’s skeleton. Now my joints and muscles rejoice again, at least for 30 minutes to an hour a day. I don’t really think of anything when I run. My mind just sets off to a temporary lull, and passively takes what is prevalent with my senses. Looking up at a clear sky being doused in the fog, and then pollution as you look towards the buildings in Makati. Looking on to the wide-open road that is yours to conquer. Listening to the chorus of chirping birds, music from aerobic sessions. Smelling the salt of the sea and my sweat. Tasting the bitter dryness of gastric juices in your tongue, craving for water and oxygen as you run. I take my water by the bay, and then drive home singing to every morning on screeching lungs. After washing up and some reading, I sleep so fucking soundly as if there is nothing to regret.
The great thing about being alone is that you though you do not have anyone thinking of you; you do not have to think of anyone else. You do as you please, with no needed hassles. Although you have to deal with people along the way, you can be respectful, polite, not pathetic, and yet selfish. I gave so much time to myself I this week’s days off; I am able to uncompromisingly delight myself with simple joys:
TUE930PM: Drank in ___ alone, and got drunk, toying with the idea of how Holden Caulfield would’ve been like if he turned 21. Would he have been able to live up to being Holden Caulfield? How immense was the influence of Salinger’s sensibility on me. There’s a reason why literary characters are immortal. There’s a reason why Holden Caulfield never grows old.
WED1030AM Finally went to UM to buy pirated CD’s: Chillout Project II, Travis, Moby’s 18 and a mainstream compilation. It was the CDs I came for but what I saw what was a lot (thought not all) of the mind-numbing, spirit crushing yet perfectly aesthetic beauty of pretty, self-obsessed and most probably characterless yet always-game-for-gimmicks La Sallian ladies. I should be telling myself with a satisfied grin, “Been there. Done that.” But I find myself saying, “I want one of those,” knowing you can’t have everything.
Nobody can eat all the eggs.
WED230PM: Like all normal employees, there should be some income draining at the mall and some faithful upholding of consumerism at G4. The hysteric but nonetheless unnecessary desire to buy appliances and amenities at Dimensione: 12000 peso beds, 8000 peso sofas. The 1200 peso mugs at Starbucks. 500 peso scented candles. 7000 peso fossil watch. 5000 peso presto shoes. 400000 peso flat screen TV.
Of course, I didn’t buy any of those.
I spent half of the day at Tower Records (supposedly, at Music One but it transferred to Greenbelt) to listen to new chillout releases that I would end up buying in UM. Yes, I am a patron of piracy. I am a patron of music, and I do not want to pay an insanely larger amount for huge record labels to bag the profit or afford a rockstar his next baywatch babe or night at the playboy mansion. But I ended up buying a jazz CD, Witch Doctors of Underground Jazz Improvisation, primarily because its not sold at UM, and it’s irresistibly good. I was also on the verge of buying the CD from a French band called “Eggstone.”
I walked to Powerbooks and spent hours browsing for books, and looking at the women browsing for books. I didn’t want to buy something experimental so I went for a classic, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” by Milan Kundera. I’ve been wanting to read this since high school, but its only now that I actually considered the price to be cheap. I also bought a long overdue read, which is a short story collection by Jeanette Winterson. I got myself some Jamaican Patties, I ate and declared myself a man who is fully satisfied with food and good buys.
D.N. and I met later for a drink in one of the new bars in Malate. He bought me a drink for a customary first pay check treat, and surprised me as always with his seriousness for the future with all his plans for family and career development. I’m not surprised, of course, that I don’t even want to think about those.
THU430AM: After some strange dreams that seemed so deliberately directed. I woke to 430’s diluted skies. I opened the windows here upstairs and played the fitting chillout project 2 compilation against the sound of rain dropping on tin roofs, faint chirps from birds, the swaying of trees, that made the window look like a profoundly meaningful postcard.
When the house awoke, I had breakfast and slept again. I also saw a really good one at HBO, “Ordinary Decent Criminals.” The laughs, mild absurdity, cleverness, touchiness, and the excellent of performance of Kevin Spacey, made my day.
I went back to the room, listening to Travis, Moby, and WDOUJI which meshes well with the weather. It’s as if somebody cast a spell. The music is unseen magic that makes life better.
TUE19JUL02. After fourteen days of having interrupted my running, the floods finally went down the drain and the skies have cleared. Like a loud welcoming anthem, I sang in jubilation to the morning as my days off kicked off. I ran and reveled as my skin was once again basked in sweat and sun.
I took a moment as always beside the Abueva sculpture. I remember, during my usher days, looking at Manila from the window of Parterre Box Right: the city with the twinkle of orange lights along with the music and dance of whoever will be performing for the night. During the mornings, the perspective turns to the other side of the window. Everything reverses, like a photoshop effect.
I saw someone who was sitting on the edge of the corner, reading her bible, clad in her office attire. It’s very apt, perhaps, to read and be taught how worthy humans are of damnation, as the story goes. The only way to redeem us human’s mess is for God to be human and be tortured to death. How vindictive. How cruel. I think I read that from the secondary text Nietzsche book.
If you are someone who have suffered so, reading that story would not have alleviated, but would have rather augmented your suffering. And to be clad in your office outfit, to miss work on a Tuesday morning. We must have strange sufferings, rarely sprinkled (maybe when the rain clears,) with strange joys.
Wednesday, while life lulls itself away. Wearing a white polo, khaki jeans, blue sneakers, carrying a copy of Kundera, I went to live the day. I started it off with a fettuccini and chicken lunch, and had it alone of course.
Since the office has cut off the supply for Styrofoam cups, I’m not able to drink all the water I’m supposed to while I’m working. So I shed a few hundred bucks for a spill proof mug at Starbucks. With the free coffee coming along with it, I had all afternoon at the coffee shop reading Unbearable… occasionally staring at the back of people’s ears, wishing at the back of my head to have the birds of fortuity to flutter and flock on me, to have the fate of Teresa meeting Tomas. I had an Oreo Cheesecake matched with the usual café latte and the delicious novel. The read is exactly how H. would’ve loved it: absorbing, but not too reading intensive and heavy. I love to pay attention to the details, and I fancy non-American authors a lot because of their much more excellent background and taste.
After an afternoon of coffee, reading, and solitude, I met up with my brother and M.M. to a place called Times.
Although the birds of fortuity (more appropriately, the spirit of chamba) have fluttered and flocked on me before, I feel that chance has not spoken to me in a long, long time.
