A Seamless Series of Niceties

Maybe I haven’t noticed my details closely enough, content as I am with its totalizing happiness. It’s been too totalizing that I had to doubt it, that it actually suppressed the little events of my life.
I haven’t noticed how I yearned to feel how I feel now. I just finished another attempt to understand Jacques Lacan, while listening to chillout, drinking cheap coffee and smelling the scented oils whose vapors are rising to the ceiling, or finding its way to the corners of my newly-cleaned, dust-free, accessorized and tastefully furnished room (at least from my perspective). The bells, synthesizers, drum and bass of the music’s ambient mood is a terrific anthem. I’m studying in La Salle again and I have access to the library and its wealth of books.
Rummaging the pockets of my bag for a notebook, I found a used pair of socks in a plastic bag. I remembered how, on the way to Z.’s 1st birthday party in Brick Road Sta. Lucia, my socks got wet as I braved the rain walking to the venue. I told this to D. and while we shopped around Gateway, she bought me a new pair. We went to her place after and had more Don Hen spaghetti and chicken.
I haven’t noticed how in the time between a job interview and a test, I was able to sit down to a chicken sandwich and three glasses of apple juice while reading Arthur Nersesian’s The Fuck-Up. It’s been one of the most amusing reads of the year. Maybe it’s something I half-expect to literally relate to. I realized how it was noon, and if not for this vacation I would’ve been rotting in the office. Instead, I am in a restaurant, eating and listening to Kruder and Dorfmeister with a view of Ortigas in the window. D. has downloaded a lot of Music for me, from Aimee Mann’s Bachelor no. 2 to Jim Morrison’s An American Prayer, to the 1999 K&D sessions, to the Yoshida Brothers.
One thing I noticed just leads to the other. Although I have never failed to stress this to myself, I have a perfect girlfriend who understands, shares, and appreciates my tastes, fulfills my desires, listens to my incessant whining, drinks with me, travels with me, and savors life’s niceties with me, while I do the same to her.
I haven’t noticed how I bummed around guiltlessly and through my own means. I even managed to give a little money to my mom.
I haven’t noticed how D. and I can have lunch dates now, from the Pasto in Ortigas or at the Orient Square Food Court. I had the time to visit her during weekdays for dinner, a movie and a few drinks.
I haven’t really focused on the details of what I’ve learned in Philosophy class, as well as that learning drive I’m now riding on.
I haven’t fully absorbed how, if I had work, I probably would never have the time to attend film festivals. S.’s film was one of the entries for the first-ever Cinemalaya. After the opening ceremonies, we had dinner and drinks at Dencio’s at the Trellis. The weekend after that we had a hearty dinner at Emerald care of one of my officemates. I haven’t forgotten the crabs we had.
I almost didn’t write about how we’re always out with friends.
I even remember that time D. and I watched the PurpleChickens, Kapatid, and Hale at Saguijo.

It’s been a seamless series of niceties that I almost didn’t notice, if I didn’t look into the details.

It’s bumming. It's bumming at its best.

What I Know

It’s not critical hermeneutics, it’s not postmodernism, but thinking of yourself as dumb is the one true learning. Maybe I’m not at all dumb, but it would be better if we had no claims to intelligence either. It elevates us to a higher podium and it gives us license to laugh at everyone who claims to be smart. Maybe it’s just classic Socrates. “Wisest is he who knows he does not know.”

Sometimes I tire of telling myself of happy I’ve been. Then I barely notice how happy I am.

What I Do

The silliest truth of all is that writing is not helping me now. Writing hasn’t been rewarding. It isn’t hiding the fact that I am dumb. There are no noble truths behind my choice to study Philosophy. I just wanted to obscure the fact that I am futureless. Philosophy only tranquilizes my thoughts on who I’m going to become in the future, and it painlessly absolves me of dreams of getting rich. It’s an alibi for having lost a “serious,” business-inclined ambition. So I finally realized why I’m studying again. I’m the dumbest ass alive.
Language limits us to the reality that language itself construes. Language is pounding the word numskull in my head.

Resolutely floating aimlessly can make you drift from one drinking binge to another. I miss drinking alone. You don’t have to worry about anything when you say something embarrassing. You can only embarrass yourself to yourself. And yes, I’ve been reading a little Sartre again. Hell is other people. No Exit was fantastic.

I wonder how I manage to say things sometimes: “Depressed people are people who don’t get life’s cosmic joke.” I don’t even get it. Haha.


What I do:
- Study Philosophy, since its midterm this week. I’ve recently learned that the reason why I’m studying, is because I’m so stupid I have to study again. I can’t even understand Kristeva and Lacan on my own. But I’ll probably feel better after getting agreeable remarks on the papers I write. I hope I do.
- Stay sober. Although it won’t be long till I’m inebriated again.
- Look sloppy. Dyaneh says she misses me in office attire. Is it a subtle way of telling me to go work? I just realized how much I look like the houseboy all the time. Not that I’m trying to wring people’s apathy, but I’d love it if they think I’m a houseboy.
- Read, listen. Most recent read: Kiss of the Spiderwoman (Manuel Puig). Who wouldn’t have grown a fondness for a Marxist revolutionary and a gay window-dresser talking about movies all day in an Argentine prison?
- Job Interviews. I don’t even take Call Centers seriously anymore, especially when they make you wait too long as if they had no regard for their prospective employee’s time, only to offer less than what you previously earned. I just put up with a minimum, job interview decorum. After four worn years, you really wouldn’t be that eager to work at entry level again.
- Spend less. The only consistent law I have ever known in economics, the only one I have put into practice, is that when you have less, you spend less. If you have more, you spend more.
- Dawdle. To be idle, to was time, to procrastinate.

Cashing In

Now that I’m doing most of what I want, studying Philosophy again and bumming around, it’s easier to live through the day thinking my life is meaningful and pleasant despite its aimlessness. Without having any definite agenda for the day, I revel in the thought of all those days in the past four years when I didn’t want to work, when coming to work actually --- ached. Life’s already paying off. I’m accumulating all these days for the future, for the days in the next few years when I will not want to go to work. When I snap out of this and start working, I’d simply say, I already used up the happy days. It’s simple and just.

Recent Movies

Melinda and Melinda. Wordy and well-told as a Woody Allen film could be. Both a tragedy and a comedy, the movie is terrifically amusing with its seemingly endless dialogues and stories with well placed elements.
Will Ferell should have a best actor nomination.

I love Huckabbees. With the way the actors portrayed their roles, with the way the script was delivered and how the story unfolds, one would have thought this movie was a Tanghalang Pilipino production on stage.
Philosophical issues were raised in the film. Some of the characters themselves were philosophical projects, and at the same time, philosophers. This movie staged philosophy into life.
This movie is how philosophy ought to be: available to a wide audience, applied in human drama, funny, and able to enlighten you on how wrecked people are, and how screwed your own life is.

The Incredibles. It’s more fun that I expected. This lives up to, if it’s not a step ahead, the usual Disney-Pixar movies. It’s going to be worth watching again especially when you’re entertaining children.

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle. This is the perfect movie to perk-up your spirits if you’re feeling all losery. It’s one of those turn-off-your-brain comedies, the type that could make your head split out of laughing, instead of making your head split out of thinking. But if you think about it even more, the movie is an emancipation of actors marginalized into “token” roles from their “token” roles. They finally have a movie of their own.
A week after watching it, I still laugh at Harold and Kumar’s Wilson Philips song number.

La Visa Loca. The film has its shining moments. In a metaphor, this shows how Filipinos would do everything to get a US visa, including --- literally being crucified. The movie even has dream sequences, and the characters can honestly make you laugh.

But it didn’t have any unexpected turns, since the plot was quite easily predictable. The filmmaker also falls into the trap of the usual happy ending identified with local comedy films. In the end, we just can’t help but be chummy.

Work Hard, Play Hard. (French Film Fest) This is the story of how a neophyte in the corporate world becomes a shark-in-a-suit. The beauty of the movie is that it was able to display the conflict, seemingly without exaggeration, of two possible outcomes in life. First, there’s a life driving a BMW and laying-off people from their jobs. Second, there’s living a life of principle, keeping your girlfriend genuinely happy, and other simpler joys. The conflict and its development are shown in absolute detail, balanced with a moderate amount of drama. It even included the interviews with workers and odds and ends of their life outside the office.
Having watched this after a dinner (mint/lemon appetizer, glass noodles, grilled shrimp, pork slices) with D. at Pho-Hoa Greenbelt, this would’ve been a perfect after-work movie, if I didn’t get laid-off myself. I almost missed working.

Restating the redundancy of things I keep repeating to myself

Ian McEwan’s Atonement. The last hundred pages were the most gripping; you just have to read it to the end. It’s like watching a perfected art film. Every essential element toned and thought of to its finest. It leaves a subtle, perceptive impression that would make you feel intelligent after reading it.

Haruki Murakami’s Norwegian Wood was so wonderful it ranks just a few notches below The Catcher in the Rye.

I’m officially a student again. I even received a partial scholarship for MA Philosophy. It does make me feel like I’m doing what I want and I’m taking control of my life. I’m intellectually stimulated, and it does give me a sense of self and I feel like I’m myself again.

I lost my job.

Thank you to ____ Inc. for sponsoring a terrific summer (they gave us an “appropriate” separation pay). And for the countless company hours they paid without me having to work. The thing I’d miss the most though, would probably the 41st floor view from the window.

I expect myself to write about all the what-the-fuck-nows, rationalize how I live, explain my situation, force a solution, even imagine the future, write, whine, and whine some more.
It’s the same old sentimental rubbish of a story that I probably shouldn’t write anymore. Now, I really ought to learn something.

Nagasawa’s piece of advice to Toru Watanabe: “Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Only arseholes do that.”

“You will have all the time in the world.” My mother always told me when I was a kid. I always thought she was right. I can spend a lifetime reading.

Two weeks after my position was officially removed from the company, I accepted a job offer from another call center. I spent a few days for interviews, tests, processing and submitting my pre-employment requirements. On the first day of training, they asked me sign a training agreement which was never mentioned in the job offer contract or in any of the interviews. It states that I have to stay with the company for 11 months to cover the training expense. I didn’t agree to this, and quit on the first day. One of the things that really did it for me, that made think, “I’ve had enough of this shit” right from the start, was the assistant trainer’s annoying, phony American accent.

Laugh at all the crap life dumps on your lap.