August 2002

My brother had all of a sudden developed an eager and expensive enthusiasm on sleeping well and living well. He decided on fixing up the room upstairs and connived with me. So much for my salary disspating concerns and the cause and costs of consumerism. He took so much effort and spent so much as well, that most of what I had to do was reap its results, sleep comfortably and pay for some of the stuff. It surely paid off well for the comfort, the smell, solace, the good sleep and the new spirit of the place. Just last month I mentioned that “there should be some income draining at the mall and some faithful upholding of consumerism.” It may be hysteric and unnecessary, but i can also be very pleasant.

___, who is in Sacramento right now is getting married in September. Together with some other high school friends at ______, we met up at his old house in Sampaloc. His uncle made a video footage for best wishes. H. will be going to the US for a 3 month long research, and will be able to surprise Mark on his wedding. H. treated us dinner at Ongpin. We went to this place called Estero. The prices were more reasonable and the food was at the caliber of more expensive Chinese restaurants. After that, we had a drink in Malate, inside New York Café where I once again noticed what seemed like an antique GE electric fan. What I enjoyed the most for the night and was quite vocal about, was the perpetual pleasure my friends give me. It’s good to see that we all get by, and everyone’s still interesting. I’m most glad for their company, and for having a bunch of them who will be willing to stick around.

I’ve been working for over a year now, and there several occasions when I felt happy and looked forward to work. The past several weeks, getting a positive outlook towards work becomes more and more difficult. That state of sedation has left and for some reason I have to admit no matter how gravely, that I feel vulnerable now.
One cannot help to wonder how people pull their act together. My mother worked for the same company for twenty-six years. I’m starting to wonder how could I last one more year at work. I’m starting to wonder what I’d do next. I start worrying about the future again. I do not even know what I want, or what is worth it.
All I want to be is a librarian. Something like that.
But I guess we don’t always end up doing what we want, just the things we’ve got to do, and maybe sometimes what we really want to do, if we muster enough strength.
“We are not here to be happy.”
Whatever happened to simple joys?
“If you are willing to have one joy, you must be willing to have a thousand pains.”
My ten minutes are up, and I have to take a shower. This feeling only lasts around 2 hours, and then 9 hours of work, a few minutes of commute, and the rest of the day trying not to think about it. And maybe I shouldn’t really worry.
Things may look different in the morning.

The next morning. Since 8AM I have thought of nothing but being absent for work tonight. Or maybe even since 10PM last night. The night was unexaggeratedly difficult, given my frame of mind. My metrics were at its most terrible. I attracted half the supervisory calls in a random queue. It’s the scene in a movie where you’re suspended on a twenty feet high wire, about to damn fucking find out about gravity.
How long has it been since I’ve last screwed up? I haven’t felt this fucking anxious since I flunked trigonometry in the first quarter of third year high school. Only a Cather In the Rye could have saved me.
I have not the strength to iron out the mess I’m currently having with work, neither to overcome my fear of losing the job to launch myself out there and see what the world has to offer. I have not the passion to squander my soul. I have confined myself in what used to be a coven of complacency now The only way to go about the screwed up psychology of working is to simply ignore it and watch TV or something. Adapt to artificial happiness and say farewell to long forgotten passions.
The final ritual is to stare at the mirror, and wipe the indifference of your face. Conjure the feeling of sedation and even enthuse in saying and listening to yourself saying it, as if the deception is real. This is the best fucking job in the world.

Tuesday Night. I met up with M., supposedly to catch up on the Cinemanila at Greenbelt. Since there’s an hour interval between the time we arrived and the beginning of the movie, we decided to have a drink at NSG. It proved that drinking had always been some sort of point of no return. We ended up ordering more and more 25 oz draft beers, betting for the bill on billiards and having a four cheese pizza. I won the bet, of course, but paid for the pizza.
We headed to Malate afterwards to go to a coyote bar, which has quickly turned into a fad nowadays. Semi-decent performers who seem pretty enough (and non-prostitute enough) dance on ledge while the libido-crazy, crowd chants in all their testosterone, “take it off.” It was fun to see M. get drunk and publicly dance a little, which would be crossing the borders of our character. I remember having a similar experience in Libis with my brother and MM.
It’s always fun to see how men fall behind the lures of women, while men luring women seems to have been a lost art, a lost archetype.

Wednesday Night. I have been longing to see ___ ever since we got in touch again. She had bestowed a lot of insight, humor, sensibility and even a little sense of adventure in my life.
We met up at this new portion of Greenbelt to have coffee and crepes at Café Breton where they played a lot of Nina Simone and Frank Sinatra. Her friend ___ was also with us at that time. They both lived in Madison before. It’s good to be around someone who’s read the same books you did, listened to the same music, saw the same films, shared the same angst or lost the same passion. The first conversation is always the most refined.
After an hour or two of laughs, conversation, and regret for the past being a gladder experience than the present, L__ had to go because she had to meet up with her boyfriend.
___ and I decided to stay along and watch one of the films in Cinemanila. We took walks along the new Greenbelt. We saw a Japanese film, Kikujiro. It was so hilarious that I laughed like a hyena and almost had a heart attack because I laughed too hard. Having a child into the picture makes it real touchy. Like most Japanese films I saw, it’s touchy, but not nauseatingly touchy. This story and this comedy is so liberating that I felt like going on a road trip or laugh out loud on all the world’s gloominess. The plot is not complicated, and is actually something line one of those Filipino cheap flicks, only more clever and more well executed.
After watching the film we headed to Malate for a drink. Cafe Adriatico's a a classic. The heavy, wooden furniture which ridded the place of the phony interiors of new bars. It had a sense of history. It looked like an old Malate-house-turned-bar and has stood there to watch every other bar disappear. The place was filled with old photographs, oil on canvas paintings portraits by local artists, as well as (and what I loved the most) a drawing of the Illustrados. The Indios Bravos. A bunch of smart, coño (and occasionally horny) old boys who wrote well and revolutionized society.
That was around four thirty in the morning. A few tables away from us, an old man was seemingly seducing an expensive, flawless looking prostitute, conversing in Chinese. On another table near us, a pair of homosexuals flirted. Malate would’ve been cold at this time, the orange lights of the streets shining brightly as a supernova. I was drunk, and as my non-sober side goes, I probably talked a lot. She was inquisitive, and her voice was deep and husky.
It’s been a while since I had a long conversation. At 6am, we had breakfast at the Mcdo in La Salle and I gobbled, still drunk as I am, as if it were the last day of my life.

Sick leave on a Sunday and Monday night. After a long self-deliberation on whether this would be an irresponsible decision or not, I landed on the choice to consume two straight sick leaves. They say it is normally the tendency of employees to screw up a little after they get good appraisals.
This is my only chance to stay home, enjoy the room, have coffee and buttered toast and lounge around, read all night, and get some TV.
The return of the 70’s show and Frasier becoming daily, makes another major impact in my life.
After two days of staying at home, I went to the mall and went for a little impulsive shopping. Got a good buy off National Bookstore, “Eros Pinoy,” an anthology of contemporary Philippine art and poetry. Most of the good authors had something in there. The good thing about working and having money, is that you don’t get second thoughts spending your own hard-earned money off the things you’ve always fancied. Expensive Columbian coffee included in the list. Although I must admit that I’d really gotten used to the thicker Italian or French blend, or even that cheap yet classic Café Puro jade blend.
Sunday Morning. The night at work came to pass and I was able to get through it uncomplainingly. The sun glowed Sunday’s magnificence on the last day of August. I’m glimmering with gladness again.
It’s seven in the morning and there’s a bottleneck in Taft Avenue. 4,761 law graduates will be taking the bar exam. There are so many lawyers and there's even more lawlessness. Despite the increasing number of lawyers, there is a seeming scarcity on those who would actually defend against poverty and injustice. So many things are uneven.
Not that I myself had done anything about it. I rest my case.
It was a good thing I bought a copy of Today when I got off Buendia. It’s strange how something as regular as reading the papers had made me felt so alive this morning. I grew a bone of sensitivity about upholding my citizenship. Reading the editorial had suddenly awakened a long forgotten passion. I remember how I had such strong convictions on national issues, on doing what is honorable, or simply being principled. Reading that editorial on Filipinos in Sabah being deported and maltreated, seemed to have rebuilt from the rubble of failed idealism I had left in me. I was in the jeep and heart went into a quick pace and my eyes were starting to moisten out of pity to what happened to fellow citizens, and out of pity to what had become of me.
I sold out to the Americans. How many times have I rationalized myself on this account, to the point that I can unpretentiously admit that I’ve simply grown lethargic on the big ballyhoo of raising the banners of nationalism, especially in a time when America considers the Communist Party of the Philippines as a terrorist organization.
The world is a magic trick. This has been made known to some. Some choose to look the magician in the eye, others choose to be blinded by the trick and simply play along.
My industry makes a lot of money for the government and for American Coporations. It makes money for me as well, who willingly allowed myself to be enslaved by the strangling hands of imperialism masqueraded as globalization, with the internet as the new playfield.
Reading on Today, I relished each delicious word the writers wrote. There’s this article on the Weekender about the war against poverty. Like Today editorials, it was written with so much elegance, wit, with a touch of humor and keen irony. Most importantly, it was framed with a backbone of their respectable ideology. The language is ordinary, with heavy words once in a while. It also comes with metaphors that work to deliver a point more strikingly, and always with a sense of history.
The smell of the crisp morning paper, it’s lay out, the font of choice, makes it more encouraging to read. It gives its identity that that is distinguished, and I believe would appeal to one’s better taste. I saw this paper start back in second year high school and it has always been maintained with excellent standards. There are still people who write for an occupation, no matter how unattractive the monetary rewards are. Contrary to the cliché, there are writers who live by, and are fed by their idealism. They must live humbly yet so nobly, living up to the obligations of their prized nobility.
And I went home to the life I choose. Having a hefty breakfast, lunch at home with my family, running around a lot and playing with the kid. Since its Sunday, my family switched to the home improvement mode again. I write ramblings that I write for myself, while having strong Columbian blend of coffee I’ve always wanted to buy and try out, listening to the new, the new Coldplay album, and a compilation of a 6cd chillout album. This room is a sanctuary. I’ll get a few pages of Kundera, then off to slumberland, thankful that I can take it easy.