Why Do I Feel So Old?

Turning 23 feels like turning thirty. 24 would feel like 40, and 25, 50. 60 it seems, is a time to go.

Perhaps you only feel this when you spend a Saturday night with a young crowd in Eastwood City with a younger brother. I never belonged to that dance-y crowd, even when I’m not even old. Perhaps this feeling is an inevitable tendency, when all you do is get old, long for the past, reconstructing your life by fantasizing about youthful memories that didn’t even happen.

One March morning when I just arrived home feeling weary from work, I was crossing our street on the way to the store to get breakfast. From the corner comes an old man: his hair all white, his skin burned by so many summers, his shoulders sunk in a small shoe-repair cart he is pushing. “Ben Shoe Repair” was sloppily painted on the box. He was an old Sisyhpus rolling his boulder up the mountain top. My father used to, and once in while, still has his shoes cleaned and shined by this old man. He must have been doing this longer than I even had memory.

He must have been so weary from his work. Today, he didn’t have enough air in his lungs when he tried to yell the trademark yell, “Sapatos.” I can’t even stare at him when my fucking eyeballs moistened with tears.

Now, what right did I have to feel so old?

Why Am I So Bored?

Because I do not have enough time do the things I really want to do.

Why Am I So Wise?

The title’s allusion to Nietzsche’s Ecce Homo was intentional. But maybe I’m not even wise --- just conceited. At least three people told me that I think of myself as someone who’s above it all, and everybody else thinks so too. I’m someone who sits in his ivory tower, as the cliché goes. They must have thought of my geeky gestures and awkward stance as a dismissal of everything else as negligible, non-intellectual bullshit which doesn’t deserve my attention.

And maybe because I used to humorlessly mock mediocrity as though I’m the final frontier of human intelligence. I refused to melt into the crowd, although I’m already wallowing in that cesspool.

____, for example, was someone who I breifly went out with but we never really considered each other seriously. She recently told me that I look down on her, and many other people whom I must have branded as idiots. Somehow, she gave a good demonstration on how I do this to her. I think I am the idiot. I should’ve stuck with her now that her Friendster profile states that she is a VJ/model. She drives a red Altis with her initials on the car plate. She used to call me babes.

Why am I so wise? I don’t have a fucking clue.

A Little Sun Escaped

“It was still raining when we decided to come back down. After a while, a little sun escaped and peered through the clouds.
Slowly, the sun stretches its rays and the sky is flooded with light.”

Aside from the sun blazing, the fires of March licking my skin, the summer forecast includes my whining on why all that summer holds is --- work. I ask myself why I have to be slumped and enclosed in my skyscraper cave while the sun burns furiously, making us burst with a maddening, searing lust for life. The night is speckled with stars. Everywhere you hear the sea waves summoning you, chanting with full strength the blissful sonic trips from Chicane, Café del Mar, and the MOS chillout annual.
And so I went away instead of whining. Three provinces in two days is a full itinerary, but I even had time to read at the back of the car.
Straight out of work on Saturday morning, we visited the church in Calaruega. We took pictures and walked along the trails with all that wonderful scenery. During our retreats here when I was a 15 year old Catholic high school student, I confessed my agnosticism, or even refused to label it as that. I had my last confession here seven years ago, and this will probably be the last place on earth where I will tell a priest to forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
We went to Sonia’s Garden in Tagaytay for lunch. This turned out to be one of the most tastefully unique, all-too-fantastic lunches I’ve ever had. I raved about it for days as my tongue dripped with its honey. They didn’t even serve any meat. At first, I almost found the prospect of paying a 550 peso lunch for leaves and grass rather repulsive. All the hype, the dough you’re shedding, and the long trip you made just pays off by the time you fork the salad to your mouth. It’s the first time I had a salad with fruits like jackfruit, mangoes, peaches, even corn, etc. The salad had nuts and probably six varieties of edible leaves/vegetables, or even flowers grown in this garden. The salad bowl was like a fucking forest. It came with two choices of equally delectable dressings. All servings were unlimited, including the usual shredded eggs, parmesan cheese, etc. The second set in the meal was bread with a choice of anchovies, basil and tomato pâté or white cheese. The main course was pasta. You still get to pick the quantity of pasta ingredients: the pasta sauce from sun dried tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, capers, chicken cream and yes – all the shrimps you want in your pasta. For drinks, there was a bottomless helping of dalandan juice with mint leaves. Everything we ate was nearly cholesterol-free. If health buffs always had this much fun eating, I’d be a vegetarian. We also just hung around the relaxing places in the garden itself that combined hippie features, new age inspirations, and in all probability: exclusively-yuppie prices. There were a lot of candles, incense, white linen and curtains, wide, wooden chairs and a variety of lamps.
For coffee, we headed to Antonio’s in the main highway. The cool Tagaytay afternoon wind blew gently on us, the volcano sleeping in the lake below. This huge cup of coffee made me want to take a crap. Tagaytay restaurants have an open-aired, wide window in their bathrooms. I had an extraordinary dumping experience, of shitting while having a live view of the sides of Taal Volcano. The world becomes a beautiful place while you drop your bombs and sink your submarines into the latrine.
The sun was setting while we were on the road, and I had my own rest. For about an hour, I dozed off on the way to Laguna.
After hours of driving or sitting in the car, nothing tasted better than cold beer that makes love with your throat. We had the beer in Pagsangjan Rapids where we checked in. We figured it would be too hot in the house, if were not also a little frightened by sleeping there with only the three of us. A cousin showed us this party scene in Pagsangjan and there was beer, music and a young crowd.
The next morning I had the unforgettable binagoongan wrapped in banana leaves, or binalot, and we went up to Caliraya for coffee. It rained like mad and the winds in the mountains knocked off the golf balls, driving the golfers to postpone their game. But then, you’d still gasp at this excellent scenery, and get to enjoy the freshness of the whipping cold wind.
It was still raining when we decided to come back down. A little sun escaped and peered through the clouds. Slowly, the sun stretches its rays and the sky is flooded with light. Like a scene from the Care fucking Bears.
Driving along on this mountain’s empty road, and reading my book on the backseat, I turned my head. My mouth encircled slowly like a bubble gaining circumference, and let out a “hu-wow….”
At close range, we saw the beginning of the rainbow, its edge emanating from Caliraya’s man-made lake. Cars stopped in the middle of the road. I wish I had this view every time I’m taking a crap.
This dispels the legend of the pot of gold found at the end of the rainbow. This did not, however, prevent me from having pot when we arrived that night. So how else could I sleep but high and blissful? I wish for more blissful, steady, sleeps and trips.

Rainwater on Asphalt

"Monday is tired and Monday rains and wants us to rest. February gives us one last glimpse of gloomy skies before summer ushers itself in and the mercury madly rises. I smell the peculiar smell of rainwater pouring on asphalt."

Morning shift. As though it were a redeeming value for the sullied mornings, Makati’s afternoon skyline is a delight to the senses. The panoramic view of the 41st floor is like a scene out of Lost in Translation. Tower antennas from neighboring buildings rise for a more cinematic effect.
When a ray of sunlight escapes between clouds, it casts silver on the bay below. It’s when souls rise up to heaven, leaving a thousand diamonds on the water and on its trail up.
When the sun sets, towards twilight, the most spectacular palettes of color are painted with happy curves.
Then the city starts to light up. At the end of the day in the office, a little life, at least, seems to begin.

On the way to becoming a full-fledged fatso, you eat Yellow Cab pizza four times a week, Mongolian bowls, beef brisket on Yang Chow fried rice, and all the deadly, savory niceties from the cholesterol factory.

I remember one indulgent Saturday morning with friends. After breakfast at Mcdo with my officemates, with mcflurries and all, I met up with a few more friends and had coffee at the Seattle’s Best in Paseo Center, then beer and stuffed bacon pizza and a little lasagna at Sbarro’s. I sent my stomach sailing to LBM.
And that night I went to AV’s party to drink some more, engaging merrily into drunken banter before I realize (and regret) later on how loquacious I’ve become.
I am Jairus Jason’s lonely lump of fat.

There is never really enough time to seize the day. As soon as arrived home on Saturday morning from my shift, after gambling and losing on NBA Live with my younger brother, I went to Quiapo with O. for pirated DVD shopping. Although the latest movies aren't out yet, I got something produced by Almodovar, the whole third season of The Simpsons.
Saturday evening was a musical/play in CCP with ___ and ___. After the play we found ourselves trudging towards the bay area in Roxas Boulebard where M&L and D. met us up. It was D.’s birthday. Roxas Boulevard is a great idea with an ideal proximity for me, but the establishments are poorly organized. The service is terrible, and food and drinks are unreasonably costly. The crowd is too huge and the bay would have no solemnity left.
But I was just too happy with our crowd, with how ___ can make a mockery while exacting humor on everything. Nobody is ever bored around her.
That night, I was just glad I didn’t feel the need to be drunk as a whirlwind.
We went biking at three in the morning.
At 5 am we were at M.’s place. L. and D. made breakfast. I slept a little and laughed some more.
____ dropped by the house at lunch to watch Almodovar’s Talk to Her while I slumber away. I wake up to dinner with my family, then watched one of the DVDs I bought recently, something that’s at least less vacuous compared too what they’d show in the theaters.
And I could use some more sleep, and a day for reading, coffee, lounging and horsing around. Before I know it, it’s already Monday. Monday is tired and Monday rains and wants us to rest. February gives us one last glimpse of gloomy skies before summer ushers itself in and the mercury madly rises. I smell the peculiar smell of rainwater pouring on asphalt. I plunge into a dejavu about going to La Salle again, my nose teased by the moldy perfume of faded-yellow books from the library. I am Jairus Jason’s perverted sense of smell. It made me sleep so well.
Today February rains like June, as though time is really not there.

A Skyscraper Cave

“This is where grandiose dreams are drained, disappearing as it dusts quietly like forgotten job orders or resumes filed neatly in folders and file boxes.”

“This is where, despite how furiously the sun may shine… casting its golden gleams every morning, despite the breath-taking heights of skyscrapers, being here is like being enclosed in a dark cave, where all you see are shadows.”

A Writing Exercise/Warm-Up. Tired of what? I’m too tired; even to think of why I’m keeping this journal, why I string these words together. Somehow it has just become essentially who I am. It’s become difficult to become who I am, even by my own standards.
I’m thinking; why am I so drawn to writing this, why do I have to present myself to myself in a proper package? Why I feel inadequate if I do not write, if I write with less insight, if I no longer write with peculiar interest. I tend to lose interest in life – which is a most natural tendency, when your days are quick and redundant.

“Ultimately we all sound like broken records glossing over the same wounds and the same bouts of giddy happiness.” Yet I continue to write, and take some of it to account. I write, even if the only line I can say is: What the fuck anyway? Living requires metaphors, the production of phrases both to abstract my reality and just make my reality – mine. Writing is when I take possession of this reality.

I can almost see now, how this puzzle is pieced. A small ray of sunlight enters the room, and lands on a bookmark in my desk, highlighting the yellow in Carl Spizweg’s “The Bookworm.” This old man is on top of a ladder cataloging books on a high shelf. Then it’s gone in a jiffy, and the sun just burns for every other atom and dreg in the world. Everything else that becomes altered into insignificant little specks in an infinite cosmos. Then it shows itself again, the 4:47 pm sunlight of the setting Sunday sun dapples the yellow sheets of my scribble pad, the old wood of the desk, and glints on the spilled fountain pen ink. I’m hearing a perfect sunset song, something out of the Calm 6-track chillout sampler, which 5 or 6 years ago, after buying a few chillout albums, was given to me as a freebie by the pretty-looking Chinese merchant who appeared to own the pirated-CD store in the left wing of UM.

The sun sets in the west, and none of its last setting rays would’ve made it to the room, if not for the tinted glass panels of the building windows across the street. At this time of the day, towards dusk, sunshine is literally mirrored to the room. I see it on my arm and it glares on my pores, against the fan-blown hair which came out of it. Now sunlight is cast on the Escolta Circa 1880 postcard. Sunlight mirrored on a painted sky, on a postcard’s faded sepia tones. And I think of how my life is as repetitious as the rhythm of my own breathing. But even if a lot of it is the same, I just must write, the way our lungs breathe air, hands must push pens.

For January weekdays, morose Mondays and all, I’m slumped into working life’s routine. Without much motivation, interest, or any grappling with reasons why I should go to work, I mindlessly manage to wake up at 7:30 pm to prepare for work, sluggishly entering the bathroom door for a shower at 8:30 pm. I just have to appreciate the fact that work is less excruciating now. I can’t complain as much. I even have time to snatch some lines and write haikus (if you can call it that) in Filipino between office hours. When I arrive home in the morning, I often manage to read two or three stories from the Palanca Anthology of Winning Works in the 80’s. So far, my winner amongst winners is Eli Ang Barroso’s “Our Lady of Arts & Letters.” This story has such a powerful, dramatic plot and a hair-rising climax. The elements of the short story as I learned it in lit class – is put in such excellent use. Awed by his characters, you can almost feel the writer showing-off his mastery through the sheer brilliance of having the development of his characters point reference to popular characters in literature. I’m awed even by the character’s own thoughts.

“I will say only this – you don’t generate but rather recycle ideas. Given enough time, I can trace your ideas to all the books you have read. Your mind is shamelessly derivative. It is a collector of clichés. And your life is nothing but a cheap imitation of art. Intellectual parrotings don’t impress me.”

It’s probably done before, of course, but execution is crucial and this one stands out exceptionally. I’m thinking of how he thought about all of it, and it just humbled me. The artful use of language and clever phrasing of his own figures of speech is almost just a given. This ranks up to one of the best locally-written short stories I’ve read in my entire life. It kept me up all day.
I also started on reading a little Philosophy again. I selected to review Kierkegaard. I’m reminded of how he trashes Hegelian Idealism, and emphasizes individualism, or focuses on individual existence. “He was the gadfly who stings you until you perform the essential act of introspective self-knowledge.” I related with how he acknowledges anxiety and dread, since I was an angsty, zit-ridden teenager who chanced upon contemplating the meaning of life when I first read him. I’ve always wondered whether I was in the aesthetic, moral, or religious stage. But I wouldn’t really be an advocate of these stages. I dislike how he holds religion, Christian religion at that, as the highest level of consciousness. He jumps seventy thousand fathoms and remains deep in the water, blinded by faith. How he loved irony.
The past few weeks, most of what I’ve been listening to would be Eggstone and PurpleChickens. They’re both classified as Indie. What it probably takes to be indie is that it’s really good music that not a lot of idiots listen to. Eggstone doesn’t differ much from Blur in having that general character of European bands, in terms of sound. They’re probably the European counterpart of Weezer. But what I especially love about them is how their rather sadness-ridden lyrics become strangely relieving when accompanied by cold, passionate vocals: “And in my eye, something is telling me that I have to rest for a while…. Supermeaningfectyless.” I hope they play this song in my wake or eulogy. In a song called Birds in Cages, “Maybe it will rain tomorrow… Maybe I’m insane tomorrow... One thing is for sure, I’m not happy anymore.” And in “Neil,” “I need Sundays… I need Highways… More than I know, when I die, I will be gone forever… More than I wonder, why on earth do I try to be so clever…” What I also would adore most about PurpleChickens is the lyrics. And I wouldn’t even say this with any bias on judgment because I know Aldus Santos, its vocalist and writer. Offhand, I’d say that this is one of the best feats local music has ever achieved in years. I can hear traces of what influenced him in music back in high school: The Beatles, Grunge and REM. If I didn’t hear about them, I’d mistake this album for a foreign act. Aldus sings in Dream Systems, “If I smile the smile of the forgetful… run from me run from me… If I smile the smile of the forgetful… stay away stay away stay away.” Or in Eyelash Envy, “I was saltwater… that you wiped off from your brow.”
On weekends, there’s still time to troop to the mall. Last week I saw the Lord of the Rings III on a date with myself. The previous week, I was with ___, D. and ___ at Rockwell, just having some laughs at the expense of other people, merely by looking at them. Then we spent all night drinking at Marie’s. Two weeks ago, I was right smack in the middle of Greenbelt III with ___, ____ and ____. ___ just came from Quiapo and she brought candles and penis rings. Each of us was assigned with, and lighted a candle, holding it while sitting on a bench. We received a few curious glances, as though we were having a happy, yet solemn ceremony.

I juggle the days and nights, watching them slip off my hands as someone who is unskillful in this pursuit. Every morning, as the end of the shift nears, I see how time melts through the 41st floor window. The Makati morning skyline is nothing that ranks as awe-inspiring, if it is not a downright horrible sight. The whole city is covered with obvious dirt and smog, divided by a clear horizontal line from the whiter clouds up above that industrial sludge has not reached and harmed. If this were an era in life, what must have been a period of "career development" has been a period of intellectual recession. At night, no stars are seen from the 41st floor window. The lights of the city look like an unmapped constellation with tiny galaxies of street lampposts, tail lights at the rear end of cars, lights from the airport runway, neon signage and the distinctive green and blue light emanating from Greenbelt. This galaxy is a galaxy which has lost its glamour. Its stars are old and tired, dying to become a supernova. They await their gigantic explosion, that second wave of the big bang which the lifeless occupants of these stoned edifices that will breathe life on their humdrum lives. We beg for something enormously stirring to happen, to perk the guts out of us. An explosion to shake us out of out of all our cherished beliefs. Like the last scene in Fight Club.
This is probably why when I ride the cab at night, I've always suspected that something is about to explode in this city, something that the bomb-sniffing trained dogs have not found.
And this is why this city has begun to look like a city of ruin from the 41st floor. This is why smog douses its skyline every morning, its whole radius covered in black cloud. It is because this is where everyone's passions begin to wane, in the long huddle of their laboring. This is where grandiose dreams are drained, disappearing as it dusts quietly like forgotten job orders or resumes filed neatly in folders and file boxes. This is where, despite how furiously the sun may shine and stretch its rays, casting its golden gleams every morning, despite the breath-taking heights of skyscrapers, being here is like being enclosed in a dark cave, where all you see are shadows.