April 2001

Another Holy Thursday. Another Holy Thursday emits a radiant happiness to me, which works through a simple formula: day in day out of classical and chillout music, a good read, the silence of the streets. The pavement is fried from this year’s even more ferocious heat. Coffee distinctly replenishes my senses of smell, taste. Days like this, coffee can seep into one's soul. I face my thoughts now and it gives me a hopeful reflection, the way a prayer gives reflection to the pious. I’m halfway through One Hundred Years of Solitude, and every page seems like a climax in its richness, beauty and ingenuity in fiction. It’s only my second sitting for the book, and I’ve read through three hundred pages as if my gaze were glued to the words fed to it, never wanting it left abandoned. The plot thickens every moment, and the events never lose its fantastic and fascinating tinge. I feel quite affected. I would think that I have my share of the madness and magic the Buendia family inherits. I try to dig up whatever deep Dionysian feeling of madness in my little attic of memory, or my chest of emotions to conjure a feeling of madness or magic. But I have felt no loss, no defeat, no great victory or great adventure that could qualify as such. I haven’t collected enough determination to finally commit the death I would want to plan for myself. I have not survived a great war to test and prove my strength. My fears are growing into monsters always ready to bite my head off. Imagined fears, of failure, and not merely being bored, but of becoming boring. I become boring when I lose the feverish enthusiasm and zest I had for more fascinating things in life.
As a less young person in search of a deeper outlook in life, I could say that I should no longer seek life’s meaning in alcohol, drugs, sex, or even in the chatter of Philosophy, or the beautiful images and ideas grazed in by literature (not that their beauty had seemed to me diminished, for they have not). Of course I continue to drink, or smoke on occasion to relax and relieve minor tensions, while drinking has become almost an obligation to nurture friendships, or just a mere habit that ruins your health. But it’s no longer the Dionysian, spiritual experience I shaped it to be. I spent four years with Philosophy and now I’m really uncertain if my interest to pursue it could be compared to an eternal torch or endless quest I formerly conceived it to be. Perhaps philosophy, literature, weed, booze are things that have become irrevocably Incorporated in my life, but they are not all that there is to my life.
There is always an immense set of mixed feelings in venturing out to a territory unfamiliar to you. The best way to put it is that even before making the journey, I already feel nostalgic of the coming home. I cling to the remembrance of things past, and my many dreams of a future that remains many a dream.

I just remembered that I bought my copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude with ____ at Powerbooks, after which we went to have coffee at a Starbucks in Glorietta, seeing the late afternoon sunlight cast its last beams on the buildings, bringing along a comforting breeze that arrives before the beginning of the night. Once again, I try my hand at the trade of the feelings of love. In a way that I could never explain to her, ____helps me mold a more mature conviction. Perhaps it is time to say, what I longed to say, that love has found someone for me, and someone who would think that love has found me for her.

February 2001

Is it strange, how my days unfold? My life has mostly been nocturnal nowadays, and I spend most of the time at home, my nights alone, writing my thesis (with half the time consumed by watching TV, rummaging for food, letting my mind wander aimlessly to the most staggering ideas and fantasies.) It’s not the first time this happened to me, having my waking habits being out of order. Perhaps I have my time in my hands, and I’m having a terrible time handling it. I don’t want to begin thinking about how other people’s days unfold. I am in this moment to examine a fate that is solely mine. I feel like Mersault, sometimes, now that I’m with him in Camus’ A Happy Death. Existential materials always give me a depressive effect, and rakes up the existential angst I thought I have overcome already. “A man always judges himself by the balance he can strike between the needs of his body and the demands of his mind. You’re judging yourself now, and you don’t like the sentence.”

I’m drinking alone in the room again, One a.m. on a Friday night. Someday, I will genuinely be no longer terrified of solitude. I bought Andok’s liempo and prepared five San Miguel bottles, negotiable of course, depending on how the booze hits me. Pirated cd playlist prepared beside me.
Drinking perhaps, allows my mind to be lose and to be bounded by the constraints making every word seem beautiful and putting much more thought to thought. With booze, everything just comes out candidly. The higher the state of drunken euphoria --- the more candid it gets.

How terrible it must be to be unable to spell the difference between drunkenness and sobriety. How difficult it must be to be in the purgatory between wake and sleep, and still be uncertain of whether you are drunk or sober. You lie in bed, your eyelids opening and closing to an unfeeling black, until later you see the gloom hiding in the shadows. Sleep refuses to come, until you begin slowly to feel afraid of the thoughts that might pay you a visit. You feel your cheeks balloon, cold sweat mounts on the hairy region above your ear, until it rolls down to the temple. Your tongue is immersed in saliva carrying the stench of liquor and tar that was left hanging on the roof of your mouth and the edges of your teeth. There is a seemingly electric pain in your feet, your throat inventing a disturbing fear of choking in your own vomit. Your head splits in ache, and your mind thinks of thoughts you wish would remain un-thought.
I open the TV, watch a film called the Swing Kids. It’s almost a good film. It's that kid from Dead Poet's Society. but it There's a lot of music and dancing, and occasionally touching or ponderous moments --- but the last scene was so horrible I wish I didn't watch the it at all. After that I watch The Practice, giving me what probably was my fourth serving of the Susan Robbins episode. And then there’s Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place which gives me genuine laughs. When the laughs are silenced and the TV is off, the agony returns. I feel that agony in my body. I feel it the very veins of my heart, arteries that could’ve exploded if it was not for my still healthy youth. I could barely imagine how my lungs and liver look like, its pores occupied by human rust.
It’s five in the morning. I went out to buy a cigarette. The moon glows opaque through the clouds and the orange fog of 5 a.m. in Malate.

What danger does a needle face, when it does nothing, when it is insignificantly swept by the careless waves of the sea? Aloneness, maybe. I could not tell whether the danger of my being alone is real or imagined.

The House Above the World. There are no other late afternoons more beautiful than this, as it is real. The beautiful late afternoons have found me again. A flush of natural, gray-scale light cast from the window of the room, to the sheets of the bed where my back rests, to the crispy yellow of the pages of the book I’m reading. When the sky clears and the sun is at its highest point, the yellow gleams deep, almost like saffron. I hear the strings of the violins weep, and the somber, grave cry of the cello. As the cake is sweet, the coffee is strong and spirited, leaving you its heavy fragrance.
Despite the many attempts of displeasure, it does not have me seized. I have lived in pleasure. I have almost felt as though I’m with Mersault, Claire, Rose and Catherine on the House above the World, where the World is shut down because the world becomes you, both its judge and justification. Everyone is clever, beautiful, affectionate, and happy as possible. I like Catherine well, as she stands in the terrace watching the sky change, naked, with all her sensual pride. Their fabric of laughter is a luxuriant one, their appetite is splendid, the day is warm and the night is studded and overflowing with stars, the view is majestic, with red tile roofs and white sheets, glittering with a cape of jewels and seashells as the sea smiles.
I want to be in that house, where the world is shut down, where pleasure never seems to be fleeting or mindless, where there is nothing to conquer but the joy of each day.

After a Saturday night, 3:40 in the morning. I’m back. I'm here in the limbo were you never really get drunk, not yet drunk to bid drunkenness goodbye and sleep it off. I wish I was too drunk to sleep it off.

Friday night. Friday night is fantastic after watching a movie alone (The Family Man). Saturday night was at ___'s celebrating another ___’s birthday. I couldn’t drink too much because I was driving. I ended up asking someone out.

January 2001

One of the reasons why I suffer a journal lag is because I let my thoughts rest and grow. This points reference to more sensitive, more candid, devastating and derogatory thoughts about to be transformed into journal entries. I think twice about immortalizing them. I think twice if they were really thoughts I was thinking.

Winged Words. Two days ago, I met up with J____ and we ventured to Powerbooks and A Different Bookstore to order the Portable Nietzsche Volume. The order would cost me a grand or so, (it’s only 450++ originally) including delivery charges, shipping, taxes, my memorial plan and whatnot. The tag price would do a lot of damage to my limited pocket. Moreover, delivery could take a period of three months. I need the book badly as primary text for my thesis.
The interesting thing is that I actually owned one before. It was a well-cut multiple-karat diamond in my shelf. I gave Nietzsche to ____. I gave it to her as gift, two mornings after I told her I didn't mean any of the things I told her. In my drunken euphoria, and in the most flowery and winged words I could rake out of my woozy headed, boozed philosopher state-of-mind, I told her. There was even a point, a non sequitur of sorts, when she accused me of being “out running a scheme to ruin people like her.” That being, Z3-driving, horse-back-riding-at-the-club, Woodrose-alumni, been-to-New-York-London-Barcelona-Paris-and-I-know-those-places-like-the-back-of-my-hand, my-family-has-a-house-in-Highlands, I’ll-spend-the-weekend-in-Thailand, I-have-Oracle-stocks, my-friends-are-Ivy-Leaguers, I’m-acquainted-with-elite-and-political-honchos-in-these-sorry-islands. She also happens to be a I’ve-read-most-of-Shakespeare-I’ve-read-Umerto-Eco,-Nick-Hornby,-Herman-Hesse,-during-high-school, Ursulla-Heggi-Edith-Tiempo-reading, bibliophile, type of girl. Of course, I was not out running a scheme to ruin her, and I wouldn’t even call her a beefy rich brat. She was too intelligent, too splendid a soul to be brat. Her intelligence, her winged words, her grace, her free spirit --- conquers all.
“I was kind of wishing that you would like me.” "You’re afraid of me."
People like me don't give out expensive jewelry or fancy perfumes as gifts, I give Portable Nietzsche Volumes.
I wonder now, _____, where have all the winged words gone? Have they flown away forgotten to an infinite, yet empty space?
I have committed you to beautiful memory. We swam in an entire Pacific of marvelous words, ideas and stories, without even drowning.

Perhaps there is no better time to examine my life when I feel like being really honest with myself. This is actually one of the most fascinating things I learned about reading Nick Hornby, (the second novel from him is “About a Boy,”) Honesty is often laughable. We could laugh at the most honest occasions we find ourselves in. When it can’t be funny, it that scene in a dark comedy movie - when it's supposed to be funny, but you can't getting shit scared.

Some thoughts are not worth committing to memory. Some thoughts are worth going down the drain. The downside, however, is that some other thoughts are lost, some worthy thoughts wander off to oblivion. Sometimes, I regret not having the memory of these thoughts. These thoughts are no longer in my life when I no longer have them in my memory.

Most of the time I go on a solo-drinking binge. It’s two in the fucking morning, and I’m on my fourth bottle. I am supposed to be writing my thesis. And to put an evaluation on my thesis: my attitude towards it right now is that I haven’t been working too hard. I have only been writing it to put it on a level standard (which others would consider to be right enough,) but the bloke that I am ---- I haven’t given my all and the wholeness of every effort I could squeeze out of myself. Instead of writing my thesis, I drank and drank had pulutan. I finished a bag of chips, an estimated 1 pound of ground beef --- sautéed, with butter on a sizzling plate, added up with potatoes, an egg, red pepper, carrots, left-over liver spread and probably a gallon of artificial seasoning with all its monosodium glutamate clogging the veins in my brain. Drinking alone is an activity I have grown accustomed. And I’ve always been sure that it is always a happy occasion, much better than other drinking occasions that I spend with more that one person in the crowd.

December 2000

The real tragedy of earning my degree in Philosophy (which should be soon enough) is entering the post-college limbo. During college, I have used parties and chewing on more ideas as an excuse to delay graduation. With almost less than two units, I’m almost there: the limbo where one grows up --- and grows up with an even more common tragedy: you grow up, and you run out of excuses for your failures.

Waiting for this Friday (course card day for Stat101)… waiting for the when, when I could say: the tragedy of my college life is over. Three days seems like an eternity away. I am glad to have the pleasure of reading Midnight’s Children comfort me, as cold gusts of December winds brush my skin. Yesterday, my thesis proposal has been approved with considerable commendation from G___ and Dr. E___. This at the very least, is a positive reinforcement for me. I’m confident I will receive a 4.0 in PHILRE1 that eradicates three units of my accumulations. I don’t consider this year as the grandest year of my life, but I would be glad to end it as I put an end my semi-sad affair with Statistics.
While waiting, I have once again resorted to the transitory yet big relief that a drinking binge brings. I went to the C__ Staff party last Monday, where the booze was unlimited. I had to limit myself though, because I had to bring the car along. I didn’t exactly have the grandest time of my life, but the party was all right. I am not sure if I am it looking at it in the right angle, but a lot of people in this staff has a certain kind of oddball quality in them. Of course, they probably find even more of that oddball quality in me, as I do frequently consider myself eccentric. But perhaps I should not judge people I have not known well.

The tragedy of my college life is over. I passed Statistics under Prof. D___, otherwise known as the most difficult professor in Statistics. I have failed the subject under another professor almost a year ago because I only attended the first four meetings. I also received a 4.0 in Thesis 1, after taking it twice. On both my terms taking thesis 1, I absolutely did nothing about it. These are trifling concerns, of course. But I must admit that they really are the major setbacks of my college life. For a measure of time, these setbacks had made me feel like a failure. I literally have passed my failures.
From Midnight’s Children, “Some afflictions, at least, are capable of being conquered.”
People are always fond of the people who appreciate them.

Ironically enough, I am supposed to be celebrating one of the last Friday nights of this year, or treating myself for my conquest over this small-time academic hurdle. But I'm not. I have not recovered from last night’s and the previous night’s hangover (at the terrific Harvard Café with their rather skillful dancers). Instead, I have spent the night driving my Mother and her Bunny Bunch Angels around CCP and Roxas Boulevard. I go home and read Salman Rushdie, who provides me with a quote (the last line I read before I stopped) too apt for my so-called conquest. Conquest, eh? I am laughing at myself.

I am hearing “Contessa” by Mozart through Winamp. Fantastic. It sounds appropriate when reading something like Lolita, and the kind of music Nabakov would listen when he's thinking Humbert Humbert.

I am hearing “Bye Bye Blackbird” by John Coltrane and Miles Davis through Napster.

Despite other afflictions that remain unconquered, I am able to say that at least, life is good for now.

H.’s Christmas text greeting goes: “How does it feel for an agnostic to celebrate Christmas? Easy, you hope that other people’s feigned and hollow happiness somehow rubs on you and in the process, hope that the happiness somehow becomes real, no longer feigned, no longer hollow. This is the most depressing ‘celebration’ of the year.”
H. is witty and eloquent as usual. I am not sure whether any of that “feigned and hollow happiness” really rubbed on me, but I did feel (as always) a bit happy --- without coercing myself to feign and pretend. But we do not measure the quantity, or the quality of happiness with yardsticks and paper cups. I just know that I felt happy somehow, and it was real.
This year’s celebration, however, is really a sadder one, with nation in crisis because of the impeachment trial. I barely noticed even a fake glint of the Christmas spirit that used to be there before. The country did not seem to be celebrating this Christmas, but country seemed mourning it.
Thus, I should no longer be surprised that __'s Christmas text greeting goes: I find no reason to celebrate the most superficial of occasions. I do not hope to absorb the artificial hope and happiness because it never becomes real… this is the most sickening sweetener to the bitter and absurd life we live out. So I’m not even going to greet you.
This was our first Christmas without my older Brother, who, as he has become a gentleman of intelligence and his own means, now works and lives in Singapore. My younger brother goes senti about him most of the time. And I miss asking him out for a drink, or him acting out his comical behavior, or our swapping of stories. In a more touchy occasion, when he called us while we were all eating with the terrific food cooked here at home, told me one time to leave ulam for him because he’s coming home for dinner. He's always had the redeeming kind of humor. Perhaps Kuya will find himself, his honest thoughts, his aspirations and his happy solitude, as he endures in a foreign land.

The year ended with a perfect irony --- in a time when fireworks light up the sky and the city at midnight is supposed to be bright as a star going supernova, the lights in our house went out. There was a brownout. Media Noche was had the perfect milieu. We had ham, wine, cheese, and candlelight.
Everyone had his/her new year’s wish, as my Father’s was for Estrada to Resign, and mine: that we may always be capable of conquering the most terrible of afflictions.

November 2000

Review of Related Literature. In the tradition of the “Review of Related Literature” in a thesis, I would like to do one (or maybe two) paragraph summaries of the non-school, purely-for-leisure books that I’ve been reading for the past two months. Most of these books have been borrowed from the library or provided for by my friends. Most of these are books my limited pocket couldn't afford.
The Tao of Philosophy by Allan Watts. As one would easily surmise, here is another Westener doing the Wisdom of the East routine. I have not read or heard of everything, but Allan Watts tells me nothing I have not heard of before (e.g., the human preoccupation with the “I” or ego, the Anthropomorphic nature of God, the inadequacy of language, or Nature’s domination in the course of all events.) I am more than thankful, however, that he reminded me of these things in a pleasant fashion. Sometimes I think so much of the future, or of what I’ll be doing next, to the point that I forget what I am doing. He reminded me and mde ask, how could I forget to live the now?
The language of Watts could be read quite effortlessly. With a Zen-inspired form, the effect becomes a soothing and yet mindful one.
There are a lot of clever ideas. Watts sees Epistemology as an effort to think thought, and therefore it is an effort to bite one’s own teeth. Also, he puts Nature in a beautiful oxymoron in saying that: “Nature is ordered anarchy.”
This book is a new acquisition from the library. I believe I was the first one who read the copy. It felt like de-virginizing someone. I read the first half of it before going to a party. The next day I read the second half in the wee hours of the morning, while listening to the Chill Out Project, with the lamp on and drinking green fucking tea.
Queer by William S. Burroughs. This actually qualifies not only as a beat-group book, but also as purely gay literature. It’s good to read gay literature when even M. accuses me of being homophobic sometimes. The story-line is simple: an American who is a withdrawing addict with really short-circuited sex drives lives in Mexico, exploring bars to scout for gays and splurges his money. Later on, he takes off to the South Americas with his pseudo-boyfriend to the South Americas in search of a mental telepathy-inducing drug called Yage.
Burroughs’ language is nothing but fantastic: very beat-group, very fifties, very very witty, with occasional Mexican and American cuss words. It's humorous, but always comes with a glint of loss and sadness. The events that transpire ride on the typical American-in-Mexico-during-the-forties stereotype, events of which are completely degrading to a country like Mexico. But perhaps it does happen.
I think like William Burroughs better than Jack Kerouac, and I’m putting another Burroughs, “Naked Lunch,” as a priority in my reading list. This time, I’ll buy myself the book. I read “Queer” in the room upstairs while listening to Café del Mar, Craig David, Moby, Joe, the Starubucks New York Jazz album, etc. (all pirated copies obtained from UM) with the newly-bought winner lamp on. I remember it was a Friday night so I made with reading more conducive by drinking around five beers and crunching some nagaraya nuts. I felt so fucking happy I even danced a little.
Listen up! Spoken Word Poetry. Spoken Word Poetry is an advancing form of poetry popular among poetry reading sessions in clubs and bars. The book features this, and it is not a coincidence that most of the authors are non-Caucasian and therefore marginalized. The language that runs in this poetry has its unique musicality that matches the colors and cultures of the authors. Some of the rhyme schemes would do for hip-hop. The content are as expected, the revolt of the black people against white oppression which sometimes sounds redundant. But perhaps it should never sound redundant until people start to really digest the point. I like it best though, if they write about Coltrane and Davis and it starts “raining rhythm.”
The author I like best in the book happens to be an Asian-American named Ava Chin. Her sensibility as her writer is close to me because it sounds Filipino. Her sad ironies deliver, and it usually is a reflection real-life event. I like her language --- rich but not too heavy, sarcastic, and very delicious. We kiss, we part, finger wide,/faculties open, folding our papers/our precious books like lost dreams and intangible mantras/scluicing the last of the coffee across our teeth/counting the streetlight to the station/praying to the subway gods at 2nd Avenue./Angry when they do not come.
The Postcard by Jacques Derrida. Nothing could be more clever than the idea of writing people in postcards with a thirteenth century portrait of Plato behind a Socrates who is writing. I only read the first hundred pages or so of this book, and it is supposed to be about postcards violating philosophy’s desire to communicate eternal truths independent of time and space. This is what is supposed to be represented or reversed, whichever, by the thirteenth century portrait. One would see this in the book, but even more, the book is also a love story exchanged in postcards. Derrida could be such a romantic, “I recognize that I love you by this --- that you leave in me a wound I do not want to replace.”
Flying Over Kansas by Rowena Tiempo-Torrevillas A book lent to me, (and eventually given) to me by A___ when he had our first real conversation at the Gokongwei smoking area. The language of the book fits well with the mold of New Criticism, a theory that seems to run with the bloodline of the Tiempo-Torrevillas gene pool. The language employed is so rich and delicious which makes reading so pleasant an experience. It's like swimming an entire Pacific of beautiful words and ideas without drowning.
Even Torrevilla’s fourteen year old daughter gets a grasp of this language. Rowena asked Rima on what color she might want to paint her room, so as to stamp more of herself on the room. Rima replies, “the blue was perfect; at night the floors and walls seemed to blend together so that she was floating on sleep itself.” One could only wonder how it is when Rima’s own words would unfurl themselves into full blossom at her own time.
Aside from personal essays in the book, it also has critical essays and lectures Torrevillas delivered that could be very helpful in reading literature, criticism, and seeing what probably is absent, but is actually present all along.
Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. In the course of my reading this book, and I am still reading it, I have read nine or ten books already. This book, it seems to me, is a happy experience I do not want to end.


Some recent movies:
100 girls. (Watched with D.N. after going to the gym on a Monday.) Basic plot: goody-goody type college dude is stuck in the elevator of a girl’s dorm. He’s stuck in there with a girl whose face he doesn’t see. The girl and the guy bangs in the elevator. For the rest of the movie, the guy embarks on a quest to find this “mystery girl/cosmetic beauty,” whom he lost his virginity to. He musters up all his “cerebral energy” and devises ways to find the girl: but his ways simply equate to doing all that is conceivably stupid. Conceivably stupid = pretending to be a maintenance man, putting up an ad, looking up the match for the panties the girl left, dressing up as girl, and going to Women’s studies class. In the process, he meets around 100 girls, and gets to play hero or catalyst for some of them. Of course, he finds the girl, eventually.
You can't really expect much from the script. While the script and the screenplay does level up to the rather low wavelength expected in such movies, it had nothing new, nothing fascinating and nothing clever to say at all. Although not absolutely “nothing,” perhaps. Moreover, it had grossly objectified women: mothers, women’s studies teachers, women and their vanity, women in their self-pity, women beaten up by their boyfriends. There good of it, however, is a detailed exposition of sexuality what could be sexual stereotypes with most of them as cliches: e.g., the room mate, who is too preoccupied with size of his penis.
The main character makes these long-monologues, which are terrifically annoying. The director has flashback effects that are equally annoying. The movie was not funny, although it made me laugh for around three times in two hours. The educational sex scene was the only good scene.

Road Trip. (Seen with cousin and older brother at Glorietta 4.) This is one of the films where
I got a genuine laugh trip. I genuinely laughed until my jaws fell. I would include this in my top 10 best comedy category (the #1 of which is the legendary Tito, Vic, and Joey’s “Ma’am, May I Go Out?”). The humor, however, is often more funny when the punchline hits the peculiar sexual conduct of the characters. It is a film about college students and young people, like what is should perceived and what will likely to transpire after "American Pie." The good of the film is that it does not contain those intolerably mushy lines, and the look-at-me-look-at-me, fashion conscious, I-I-I vanity and apathetic attitude of the youth.
The film delivers a line that should perhaps define college life: it is the window of opportunity for us to do the craziest things, i.e., scoring for sex, and everyday, the opportunities are getting smaller. This gives me more reason to delay graduation.

Late Saturday afternoon. Listening to the usual playlist and some 98.7, I muse on my thesis and get to accomplish my thesis structure. I pass the decisive motion to the honorable judge, I am not going out tonight. I, the plaintiff, am awarded the 500 bucks I am going to save for not going out. Soon enough, I’ll be able to buy the hardcover Nietzsche volume at A Different Bookstore. Besides, I still have a party hangover from a friend's sister's party. Tonight, I am going to cook myself spaghetti, and I'll buy fried chicken or pork barbecue. Before that, I’m going to beat the meat, with the kind assistance of adult films starring the pearls of the Orient. I am also looking forward to the HBO Saturday night movie. Lately, I’ve been having a lot of sleep, pancakes, and some cyber___. What is even more pathetic are their strange-sounding names: e.g., diwata (who claims to be a geologist taking her Ph.D) and Smermaid (who likes bondage.)

Confessions getting truer and truer by the minute.

College is indeed, the window of opportunity to do both the craziest and the most intelligent things. And I believe I have accomplished the latter as much as I did the former, the way the Appollinian balances the Dionysian.
I went to the Sophia/Lit Circle party. Most of the philosophy professors were there, and I got the chance to toast beer and tequila with them once again. It's flavored with conversations on the chaos theory, Nietzsche, Feminism, garnished with genuinely good laughs, cigarettes and genuinely intelligent notions raised. In the end most people confessed to being perverts. Some people objected to being perverts. Some of them confessed to being lesbian or bisexual. Professors get to dance with students --- yes, I’ve seen them in action. Jim Morrison and Santana hung their music in the spirited air.
The booze was overflowing and I reveled in drunken euphoria. The most important realization of the night is that these parties give me more excuses to remain in College, where all’s swell and so well (except for Stat101).

August 2000

I decided. I had to go through a series of decisions, the results of which would be regrettable, or just slanting towards being regrettable. Life has been less kind and less convenient than usual. And I’ve been no less than lazy and too lame to affirm my life, grease my world and run the show.
I decided to delay my graduation for another three months, with only six units left after this term. I didn’t pursue my thesis for the second time, and I am once more defeated by default. I had to rationalize this to my parents. It is terribly annoying and energy draining, preventing you to do a whole lot of things or set your priorities straight, because you know that your parents disapprove of the way you run your life. I keep on telling myself that college is a marketplace of ideas and I haven’t been buying a lot of ideas on sale. All the same, I am not able to buy those ideas no matter how long I stay. Perhaps it’s time I move on to other markets, chew ideas of a different flavor. Perhaps I just didn't want to give up my college lifestyle at 19.
I decided to resign from the staff job at ___. I’ll certainly miss the shows --- my Philharmonic Orchestra Friday nights, my Sunday afternoon ballet from PBT or BP, TP plays, gala evening Operas, chorale festivals, film showings, art exhibits, that sparkling crystal and capiz chandelier, the marble, the hallways, the close encounter with real artists, the lumpen fucking culturati and the cultural fucking elite. Miss Saigon season is up this October. This musical is probably something a broadway classic, but it just saddens me to think that many Filipinos think that culture is embodied by something like Miss Saigon, and not by something like “A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino.” Behn Cervantes was saying that Miss Saigon should not be treated as some national event because it is only, after all, the “cultural surplus” of another country. It is a good show, yes, but it goes into the way of the slowly growing, yet highly esteemed theater groups such as Tanghalang Pilipino. It is regretful to think that under the banner of promoting culture, people would rather watch something from Cameron and Mackintosh. There are probably more morons than geniuses in the art world.
I decided not to attend my test and interview last Friday for Andersen Consultancy. I thought it isn't the job for me.
I decided not to stay sober from my drinking marathons.
And finally, certainly the most woeful, most regrettable decision of all: to decide that life has been regrettable lately.



Friday night. I take a break from doing nothing. Today I wish I had some company but there's no one to date. So it's alone as usual and fun as usual. I head out clad in a thin green shirt, khaki shorts and leather sandals. On the last full show the theater was a big freezer where even Dunkin Donuts coffee wasn’t any help. This Friday night’s movie is “Down to you." It was some chummy, feel-good movie, with its level of chumminess within the bearable. At the very least it's unlike the usual teeny-bopper flicks that make you puke your guts out. It was about relationships and commitments in the college and early post-college stage. What makes it interesting is the character who studies goes to art school in New York is a killer dancer. Somehow I feel like I myself could do a movie like that, a film which mainly consists of clever dialogue, a winner soundtrack, a lot of kissing and sex.
There’s a unique pleasure I feel every time I step out of the theater, and walk the empty, tired mall late at night. I let the dry winds outside blow warmth on my cold limbs as I think about what I just watched.
Tonight I go home to fulfill my few academic obligations, and I was feeling a recovered from last night's tedious hangover. But I find the usual house scenario: friends are here are you're robbed of your time alone. No solace in this place but sometimes you're happy that there isn't.