And then I long for the ending, like how we all secretly wonder how our own life would end. Jean Paul Sartre said something like this before...
Thursday night. I went to one of my officemate’s birthday parties. The celebrant was part of the group I went with to Gallera and ___ didn’t have a date so the timing’s perfect. This was a Makati bar that’s frequented by a good crowd. We did have a good crowd that night and you recognize some of them from college. They all looked posh and snobbish. Once you meet them, they are not even snobbish and posh. They’re merely boring, yet often pretty good-looking. Nowadays, the ladies just dress better and better, and become less and less interesting with their rather generic characters. What is there to chitchat and chew the fat about but hows-your-career now or who-you-goin'-out-with?
We had to wear red cloths on our arms so that waiters can recognize the ones who can get free beer. A week ago, a group of around 200 young soldiers wore red armbands during their brief revolt in Oakwood, Makati. I admire their candor for exposing the anomalies in the Army, for standing up to stress their good point in a way that is literally more explosive than firecrackers during New Year’s Eve. Pilosopong Tasyo would’ve commended it. And now it’s also a party fashion statement.
I got all boozed up with the free flowing beer. I joined a few officemates to North Park for a food binge.
Existentialism in the Sunday Paper’s comics section. Of all places. Calvin and Hobbes had always been existential. I have the slightest clue why children are given access to this type of literature. Nietzsche once said something like, of all animals man was the most sorrowful that he had to invent laughter. Now, children just laugh at the most inconsolable human tragedies, or dilemmas shown in Calvin and Hobbes:
“We’re each going to die, our species will go extinct. The sun will explode and the universe will collapse. Existence is not only temporary, it’s pointless. We’re all doomed. And worse, nothing matters.”
This morning, Calvin and Hobbes philosophizes again:
“The secret to happiness is short-term, stupid, self-interest.”
Last week, I’ve resolved to quit my job. I don’t know what to do next. But Calvin is right. You can even translate it to cliché’s: Time flies and life waits for on one.
With this short-term, stupid, self-interest, I’m going to be happy.
Tonight, I’ve been distracting myself from those thoughts and went for the usual terrific dinner alone, then a movie.
Even ants must be tired. Monday would’ve been uneventful, it if isn’t the official day I filed my resignation. I just stopped whining and stopped worrying and just pulled the trigger and jumped the abyss. Self-indulgent as it is, I’m very flattered that my supervisors are still urging me to stay and pep talking me into staying. Nothing much happens in the office except to endure work. Except perhaps, those excellent moments of having laughs with officemates whom I’ve grown a fond closeness with, and enjoying the chillout music which you get to hear sometimes. And there’s a lot of HBO movies to watch at home. My leaves were approved already. One more month. One more month and I still feel drained about working until my 30th day of notice.
Even ants must feel tired. This tired.
Breakfast with other officemates. Breakfast with officemates became more frequent ever since the McDo in Paseo opened. It’s cheaper and closer than the usual North Park. Only, the fucking breakfast stories are perpetually the same. The same calls, issues, accent slurs, and despise for other office mates. The same shit in different versions, which I’ve been hearing about for the past two years. Eternal recurrence must be real. What can I expect? I can’t just change the subject of conversation to the dichotomy between philosophy and literature, or what they think would be the most feasible interpretation of human evolution.
It was St. Dominic’s feast day. Earlier in the afternoon, life dragged on as usual and I was in Greenbelt, having coffee and trying to touch base with a former officemate. She was pretty, pretty interesting with an even more interesting fashion statement. A med school student in UST who went to Ateneo for her undergrad. We had the usual see-you-again-soon. It was Friday night off and I met up with M., DN, and R., for a drink. I was on my fifth or sixth drink when my younger brother called me and told me in a shaken voice, that they were in the hospital.
I was drunk, and it made me feel it less as I absorbed this sorry event. We all stayed in the hospital until the morning.
I wasn’t there when it happened, but I’ve heard about the story around one hundred two times. The usual crowd was gathered in front of the house at around 11 pm to head off to the Friday night gimmick. A group of five robbers armed with .22 and .45 caliber handguns presented themselves as policemen, ranted that they received a complain from our neighbors, and the bastards just started to ask for everyone’s bags and cellphones. My brother protested and one of them pulled the trigger to his chest but the gun jammed. The earth must have stopped. Another one of them shot a .45 to his leg. They fired two more shots, probably in a frenzy, and a .22 bullet hit my cousin’s back. It went out through his left arm instead of his chest, as though fate blew it’s own auspicious wind to keep them alive. The robbers ran rapidly to their getaway car: a taxi named Exodus. Even moments have their allusions. No one caught the plate number. Nothing was taken, but a lot changed. It’s an ammunition of sadness, anger that turned to despair and paranoia. Everyone thanking everyone for being alive.
My brother and my cousin managed to still humor everyone else about what happened. Yes, we still had a lot of laughs when we were at the hospital. Even God must have a sense of humor.
I saw Hannibal with my brother when he was already back home to recover. Lecter tells us to be grateful for the wounds, for they possess the power to remind us that the past is real.
At the back of my head, I’ve always tried to prepare myself for life’s blows, especially for the more fatal ones. I’ve hadn’t seen anyone close to me have a brush with it until now. It fills you with so much of that raw fear that you fear even writing about it. You can feel your heart beat out of your ribcage. I’m thankful that our family was able to bear this blow. Today, I throw my faithlessness away and thank the Saints who gave heed.
It one of the nights I spent at the hospital, I read the entire book of Job.
I spent most of my 7-day vacation leave at the hospital with my brother and my cousin. Some nights, ____ and I watched videos at home while having a drink or two. I even managed to see an exhibition in Cinemanila. The incident kept my mind off thoughts about my recent resignation, which would be effective next month.
The bumming-around, in-between-jobs period is the time to decongest my mind and let an influx of new thoughts enter, and finally let other things to happen.
I went DVD-shopping again in Quiapo with O. Depending largely on what’s available, I usually get something such as:
- A classic I haven’t seen before (e.g., The Piano, Singles)
- A recently-shown, acclaimed movie, recommended by a friend I can trust with for discerning good movies (e.g., 28 days later, Animatrix)
- A good laugh (e.g., South Park)
- All time best movies (e.g., Fight Club, Amelie)
- Pornography
- International films I haven’t even heard of. I usually just experiment on anything with Cannes Film Festival nominations and awards, or fimiliar director's names: Krystof Kieslowski, Pedro Almodovar, Lars Von Trier, Gus Van Sant. What ends up as the best DVDs on my little collection are mostly comprised of these festival films.
Last night, after catching up on sleep, I treated myself to a burger, and even cooked fried rice with Onang at three in the morning. I took a shower while having a beer. Hot water splashes down to me and cools me down as the cold beer slides in to my throat. After the shower, I saw the film I bought, even though I haven’t heard of it before. I just thought the name Gus Van Sant sounded familiar. Besides, this one wouldn’t be too strange since it had Matt Damon on it, and he was a co-writer. But what was there to write in this film anyway? It has the most useless plot: two friends both named Jerry goes to the desert in search of an unspecified “fucking thing,” decides not to search for it anymore. But when they decided not to abandon the search, were already lost in the desert. Throughout the film, they just looked for the place where they parked their car. “Hey Dude Where’s My Car?” was funny, and this wasn’t. The DVD’s jacket pledged visual breadth. The film opened with the shot of a car moving a long the empty highway for a full five fucking minutes while playing a sound song you’ve heard in some soap opera. Most of the film shows them taking dreary walks in the desert. The only visuals were sand, clouds, the endless sky, rock formations, which weren’t even too fascinating, or wouldn’t be striking enough to make you spout a big “wow” like you would when you see the Grand Canyon. Only fifteen minutes of the film had a musical score.
I thought about this film again, and beyond its story, or the lack thereof. And I thought I saw what all the visuals and what this rather existential plot tried to convey. Two hours of a film where virtually nothing happens with its ridiculous plot and preposterous events (like how they survived the desert without food or drink for almost three days) must tell me something. It was all a visual exaggeration. An existential story for Kafka TV. After the first thirty minutes, I started to really enjoy it.
This is a movie that makes us think our own thoughts, of dressing it with our insights and tossing in our own metaphors instead of spilling breathtaking special effects on the screen, or adding zing to it by putting lots of sex, then box a message somewhere in the dialogue.
I have no objections about what this film seems to tell me. We go through life searching for an unspecified thing. We turn our back, and we’re lost.
And then I long for the ending, like how we all secretly wonder how our own life would end. Jean Paul Sartre said something like this before. We either die and leave people behind, or the people who matter to us are the ones who die and leave us behind.
