A flood of images, a torrent of poetry is waiting to be worded. My cup has not been emptied of passions. And there will be time to break this mediocre silence.
My resignation took effect last September 4, 2003. It’s official. I have become the bum I have dreamed of becoming. The world is conquered one little dream at a time. I have no schedules to adhere to, no prescribed life patterns to follow. My only occupation is to be a slacker incarnate, a pathological dreamer. It isn’t too easy to do what I’ve thought I would accomplish before I resigned. I wanted to decongest my mind and let an influx of ideas enter. I thought that’s how I’d figure out what I really want out of life, or what to do next. It will come, but it won’t come in a heartbeat. Despite all the time I have in my hands, this bumming around business provides a lengthy list of exhilarating activities that you can’t do them all in one day. It seems that you’d never run out things to do, even as a bum. I only have a little dough to live off though.
On the first night of my resignation, I stayed in the office to say goodbye to some friends and co-workers. Although I often doubt the earnestness of human relationships, I have to say that I have developed an attachment with some people in the office. And yep, I’d really miss some of them. And I’ve learned a thing or two about life, or about the travel industry, about contact center operations, customer relations management, about the travails of office politics and office gossip. Or maybe there was a friendship that made an impact in my life. I treated the e-mail team to pizza, and wrote them a rather sentimental farewell letter. Although most of the letter was sincere, some of it was merely just touchy blabber, flavored with nice-sounding words. What really made my day was the way many of the people in the team sent me their own thank you e-mails, and sent the entire e-mail team their thank-you. Many of them responded, including team supervisors, with many other thank-yous and congratulations. Someone probably thought of sending a glad-to-finally-be-rid-of-you. One of them even shed a tear.
But I should not shed any tear, or be nagged by any guilt. I’ve longed for this. This is one of those abysses that I should jump into.
There it was. My first job after college, the launch of my so-fucking-called career. Two years and two months of my twenty-two year lifetime.
Sometimes, life does tend to make an automatic reconstruction of itself. I think it was my April 2001 calendar, on my post-college limbo, when I asked myself one of the most important, life-shaping questions of all, which I have to ask myself again:
What the fuck now?
While in that limbo in between this job or the next thing to do, here I go again with the plans I’ve hatched.
Jairus Jason, M.A. Philosophy. The third term starts this coming January. That’s three months away. This translates to three more months of bumming around. Yummy. The upside to this plan is that I will have an undertaking that I am profoundly interested in, and something that would pass off as my passion. My thirst for knowledge will not remain unquenched. I'll have a lot more intellectual intercourse, or even have something legitimately scholarly to say. I can live a life of learning, and come close to teaching Philosophy for a living. Since I’d only have to take a few units, there would be room for some spare time, for everything else to savor in life. Besides, this was part of my original plan when I was 15 or 16 years old or something. The big downside is that it will be difficult to have a steady source of income to maintain a-little-bit-more-expensive lifestyle. For the meantime, my immediate, non-intense plan of action is reduced to reading another history of philosophy book.
Jairus Jason, Anonymous. As if I were not anonymous enough in this world, the other attractive option is to just find another job and become just anonymous – and have my little, easier pleasures. I want to be in those shoes again, like when I started out in PeopleSupport. It comprises of just working in the day/night, and having a little life after work. I’ve set my time limit to working in _____. I told myself two years. I should sustain the perspective, in this little existence of mine, that something else must be worth doing, and I will reap some significance. I should also say that I was already happy that I’ve worked there. Unless I remove myself from that comfort zone, I will never land on a higher plane. I’m sure I’ll find something else to do. I need to pressure myself to find something else, and beneficial part of that pressure requires that you bum around a little. Money is a secondary consideration. I just want a job that is less stressful, something that would give me more time to my own, maybe something I’d enjoy more, something different from my previous job, a new environment of people who I can afford to be anonymous with. That’s a charming idea. I miss solitude, I miss the me who has been – eccentric. Work at _____t has welded me so much with people that I can’t have that eccentricity and solitude.
Jairus Jason, Failed Writer. A co-worker told me that since I used to write e-mails for a living, I should now write for life. As a bum, I can finally found the time devoted to long hours of reading. I haven’t cropped up any new story ideas, and it has been thirty three thousand years since I’ve produced a truly legitimate creative output. Since I started working, I wrote two or three bad poems. But with all this time in my hands, the wisdom gained, the learning that surrounds me, the fascination that fills me, the spectacles dazzling my eyes, the sounds that serenade a rusted soul into recovery, smells, tastes, must come together and mesh into something edible, something to feed the soul and resurrect a writer’s dying voice.
Like the Genesis, writing could be done out of boredom, or loneliness, the way god created man, and man demanded woman out of god. Creation demands for something to come out of you, something that enlivens and enriches. A flood of images, a torrent of poetry is waiting to be worded. My cup has not been emptied of passions. And there will be time to break this mediocre silence.
If all else fails, I’m a failed writer.
How does the slacker incarnate’s day go by? It’s like having a day-off everyday.
Monday, 08 September. At the start of the day, I read a few chapters of “The Reader,” (which I'll want to talk more about later on) then made a second attempt at watching a French film called “Those Who Love Me Can Take the Train.” This film is incredibly dull. It’s unbearable. I can’t last this movie. I always sleep on it, attempt after attempt of watching. I woke up to lunch and saw “Almost Famous” again. It tells us to be “unmerciful when you write.” Tell the truth with all its warts and dark spots. Write about the gore, the embarrassment, the sorrow and inevitable loss. It just made me think that this is what makes writing real. At night, I head to Greenbelt 3 to watch ___'s gig at Kidd Creole. H., J., ___, _____, ___, ____ and ____ were also there.
Wednesday, 10 September. Finished reading “The Reader.” The book starts with recollections of a 15 year old’s love affair with woman two or three decades older. The story moves into how their love transpired, and was almost lost, or almost endured. It’s an endearing read that raises questions about morality, the incapacity of justice to bring judgement. It’s a story of how even if love may be denied or abandoned, it can outlast everything as if it were never lost. The first time we love, is always the one that lasts. I kept thinking of the first time I loved. Some people only love once in their lives.The story that just draws you, despite characters that seem passive and undemonstrative. The book achieves a terrific literary sense and even philosophical substance. I love how the reading and bathing came before the lovemaking – and how this was sustained throughout the story. I love how he was obsessed with her smells, which I could almost smell, myself. I hate how he would never smelled her that way again, or ever love again. After the read, relishing and reviewing it, I go to the gym for some limb-stretching and running running running. I spent the night helping out my brother and his classmate on their thesis, while having a little drink.
Thursday, 11 September. A perfect day for slackering. HBO movies, Friendster, NBA live all day.
Friday, 12 September. The previous evening, I started reading a terrific play called “Last Order sa Penguin.” I’ve been itching to read local material again, and I’ve fulfilled my craving. I’ve read this while listening to my growing chillout playlist, and taking it steady in a room whiffed with the smell of burning perfumed oils. I finished reading the book in one sitting/lying, until the early hours of Friday morning. I laughed like a hyena on this book. I slept a little and woke up in the afternoon. Went to the gym again, which has become an every-other-day habit. It’s Friday night is as seductive as usual. Met up with ___ at Greenbelt 3 and just had drinks around at Vodka Ice Bar and Absinth. The original plan was to party at Wasabi. It was too early so we headed to Bistro 110 first and downed a few more bottles. At 1am, we were at Wasabi and went home whirling.
And so it goes. The Slacker Incarnate days go by. Everyday must involve something even slightly interesting, like watching Filipino flicks to blissful sonic trips with new CD buys at UM (most recently: Hed Kandi’s latest Winter Chill, Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins.)
What all this time is, is what I should take I advantage of in my status as a twenty-two year old bum with some means to play around.
All these --- her hand on mine, soft waists, flesh crashing, pretty faces --- was a curiosity I merely missed.
I am at the height of my selfishness, so when something is demanded out of me I resign to the aloneness I have happily adapted to.
Between September 22-26, I spent a lot of time being extensively interviewed by an Information Technology company with vacancies for a start-up division in their Marketing Department. I never thought it would be this quick to get a new job. So much for all that “what-the-fuck-nows?” “What-does-it-all-mean?” stages and “What-the-fuck-should-I-do-with-my-life?” questions I’ve been asking myself. I haven’t had the ultimate, best of bumming around but with my paranoia I feel that the savings account is quickly draining and I don’t think my parents would be too happy with my slackering for over a month. I considered the location (PBCOM tower) and it was a within the block of the Makati office I previously worked, nearer the loading zone, only with less of _____'s friendly environment and a slightly older crowd. This paid just about the same salary. I’ll be a pioneer in a start-up Marketing department division. It guarantees weekends off Business casual was required. I just had to bite the offer, which was the first to come along. I think I really did well in the interviews. Maybe I just got too piqued about not having a ready answer when people ask me what I’d do next. Perhaps I wanted to prove myself that I’m marketable in terms of filling out job vacancies.
And I got hired. Work starts again in two weeks. Now it’s only like affording yourself a two-week vacation leave and starting from scratch again.
I didn’t think of it too much and just jumped at the chance, not to mention how I joined myself back again in working life’s loop, less than a month after I left it.
I’m not even writing my thoughts on it since I’m already suffering a long journal lag and so much has just been happening.
But that’s it. Later, I’ll be too old for just about everything I planned on doing back when I was young. What the fuck are plans for? I’d be repeating all the clichés I’ve advised myself, ranting the same rubbish, blabbering the same bullshit, philosophizing the same philosophies, typing the same words, hitting the same keys, thinking the same thoughts, hearing the same music, living the same lifestyle, yammering the same complaints, having lost touch --- all as though I’ve already rehearsed for the life I’ve lived.
Months from now, the prophet prophesizes: I’d ask myself,
“What the fuck am I doing?”
